Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1995
Abstract
Jones provides useful historical contexts for Terril's humor; painful details about the Depression, for example, explain why most of the "jokes" about it are subdued. As Ma Joad says, however, "We're the people that live ... we go on," and they did so, partly through laughter. "The reason there were fewer wrecks in the old horse-and-buggy days was because the driver didn't depend wholly upon his own intelligence." "Fifteen percent of school children are below normal mentally, we are told. That's too high a figure. We don't need that many members of Parliament." In giving "new edges to old saws," Terril writes, "Two pints make one cavort."
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 15:1 (Winter 1995). Copyright © 1995 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.