Dust Pneumonia Analysis in The Worst Hard Time

A common ailment in the 1930s, with symptoms including coughing fits and body aches, usually chest pains, “and shortness of breath.” The disease was common among children, infants, and the elderly. Some of those who were infected died several days after their diagnosis.

Dust Pneumonia Quotes in The Worst Hard Time

The The Worst Hard Time quotes below are all either spoken by Dust Pneumonia or refer to Dust Pneumonia. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

Westward Expansion and the Settlement of the Southern Plains Theme Icon

Keeping the dust out was impossible. Even fresh-cleaned clothes, hanging outside to dry on the line, were at risk [….] Lizzie swept five, six times a day. She had her boys shovel dust in the morning, after it piled up outside the door. Sometimes a big dune blocked the door, and the boys had to crawl out the window to get to it. The dust arrived in mysterious ways. It could penetrate like a spirit, cascading down the walls or slithering along the ceiling until it found an opening.

Related Characters: Melt White, Lizzie White

Page Number and Citation: 179

Explanation and Analysis:

Dust Pneumonia Term Timeline in The Worst Hard Time

The timeline below shows where the term Dust Pneumonia appears in The Worst Hard Time. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

...then it moved to the East. The livestock went mad, then suffocated. Children died of dust pneumonia and people avoided hugs because the electric shock could knock a person down. During the... (full context)

...from Ike Osteen, is another witness to the Dust Bowl. Her lungs remain scarred from dust pneumonia . Her mother, Louise Walton, a former Broadway dancer, had moved to the plains due... (full context)

...dug out of the earth to create the Panama Canal.” Afterward, Jeanne became sick with dust pneumonia , and a doctor said that she might not live for very much longer. (full context)

...children. The infant was adopted by a couple east of town, but it died of dust pneumonia shortly thereafter. (full context)

...muttering incoherent pleas.” She had been bankrupted by the wheat bust, her husband died of dust pneumonia , and her children were “hungry, dirty, coughing,” and “dress in torn, soiled clothes.” The... (full context)

...the dust was a never-ending task. Her children were hungry and she was afraid of dust pneumonia , which her sister had contracted. Young Melt’s job was to tend to the garden,... (full context)

Meanwhile the plague of dust pneumonia continued to take lives. A young mother from Dalhart died at the age of twenty-six... (full context)

...to leave for the baby’s health. Meanwhile Ruth Nell’s great-grandmother, Louzima Lucas, was dying of dust pneumonia at the family’s homestead in Texhoma, Oklahoma. She hated what No Man’s Land had become.... (full context)

...coughing. The baby had a temperature of 103 and could not eat. Ruth Nell had dust pneumonia . (full context)

...Little Jeanne Clark had just left the hospital in Lamar after “a long bout of dust pneumonia .” She only had dresses made of sackcloth, with the brand names of onions printed... (full context)

...where the dirt had gone and what it meant, beyond being unable to farm—and that dust pneumonia would continue to infect people until the soil was stabilized again. Unless something was done,... (full context)

...The town felt betrayed. Worse, the land was moving again, and children were dying of dust pneumonia . (full context)

The Worst Hard Time

Timothy Egan

Dust Pneumonia Term Analysis

Dust Pneumonia Quotes in The Worst Hard Time

Dust Pneumonia Term Timeline in The Worst Hard Time