Exploration 7

Shanty towns were referred to as "Hoovervilles"

     A theme that stands out in the book and in society in the 1930's is people leaving their normal homes. They may be evicted due to not being able to pay rent or just moving out to try to move somewhere they can make a living. In the 1930's and 40's the shack towns that people would move to when they could no longer live where they used to were commonly referred to as "Hoovervilles". Homeless people would build shacks to live in and more and more would come to build their own shack with everyone else. The title "Hoovervilles" was referring to President Hoover and that they thought it was his fault for the great depression and that they were living in the shanty towns. I believe that the term was used against President Hoover, because then anyone that heard his name would automatically associate something bad with it. The living conditions of these towns were not pleasant and many people who didn't have carpentry skills would have to make their homes out of boxes or whatever they could find. I would hope that this would not happen to us in the 21st century, but we could have come awfully close with all of the foreclosed homes recently and the hard times everyone is having. It shows that sometimes you have to work especially hard to just have the bare necessities and not even everything that we take for granted every single day.