The play is set just after the event known as the "Dust Bowl" in America. For almost 10 years, the Southern states of the US were covered in major dust storms which wiped out the crops and destroyed homes. History says "The simplest acts of life - breathing, eating a meal, taking a walk - were no longer simple. Children wore dust masks to and from schools, women hung wet sheets over the windows in a futile attempt to stop the dirt, farmers watched helplessly as their crops blew away." Steinbeck wrote his novel The Grapes of Wrath in 1939 towards the end of the natural disaster.
TASK: Research the "Dust Bowl". Your findings will really help you to understand your character(s) in the play and the situation they are in. Find information, pictures and - if possible - first hand accounts of what it was like to live in Oklahoma at that time.
