Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

Consider your prior knowledge of the era referred to as “The Great Depression.” When was the Great Depression? What happened during this time period? How did the Great Depression affect the world economies?

Teaching Suggestion: This Short Answer Question orients students to the historical context of the play. In the US during the 1920s, the majority of people had begun to use credit to make purchases, ultimately resulting in a credit balloon that “popped” at the end of 1929. As a result of this “pop,” and many other factors that led to Wall Street’s Stock Market Crash of 1929, the decade of the 1930s was a period of slow economic growth, high debt, and hunger. The Great Depression became a global economic crisis, as most countries experienced high unemployment, food shortages, and a lower standard of living. Davis’s play is set in the early years of the Great Depression and points to the discrimination and Systematic Racism that Aboriginal people faced during the global economic hardship. Many historians believe that one of the main reasons that the Great Depression ended was the start of World War II in 1939, which boosted economic growth through an increase in production and the creation of employment opportunities for wartime manufacturing.