This image of a downtrodden family making their way through a landscape that combines urban and rural elements has the haunting quality of a nightmare. It emphasizes the misery that workers across the country experienced during the Great Depression. Mitchell Siporin was sympathetic to these workers and felt a connection with them as a Jewish man whose family had suffered and been forced to leave their homeland. He once said: ​“I have known depression and war and lived in other countries than my own. Everything I have seen and felt I have [hoped would] … vindicate and reinforce my artistic ideas …” (O’Toole, Mitchell Siporin: The Early Years 1930–1950, 1990)