Freedom from Want: Reimagine this Illustration

Overview:

After having opportunity to view and discuss Norman Rockwell's illustration, Freedom from Want, students reflect on how this freedom is present in their lives. Freedom from Want represents the idea of having basic necessities for survival, including clean and water, shelter, clothes, food, family and friends. Students will benefit from discussion about the difference between basic needs and wants above and beyond basic necessities.

Enduring Understandings/ Essential Questions

1. We live differently today than in years past.
2. Our basic needs do not change over the years.
3. Basic needs are universal.
   • How is the way we live today different from the way people lived in the past?
   • What basic needs do we have today? Are they the same or different as those of years past?
   • Does everyone have the same basic needs?
   • Have people's wants/desires changed?

Objectives:

1. Students will create an original picture illustrating today’s lifestyles.
2. Students will compare illustrations from different times in history and reflect on similarities and differences.
3. Students will write a brief, cohesive text to accompany an original piece of art.
4. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the difference between want of necessities/needs and wants/desires.

Background

The title of the illustration, Freedom from Want, can be confusing, especially for  children. Children may interpret it as meaning the freedom to have anything they wish. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his January 6, 1941 address to Congress, referred to the right of everyone, everywhere in the world, to enjoy “freedom from want of basic necessities.” The United States was just pulling itself out of the Great Depression. President Roosevelt famously told Americans in 1933 that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” but the nation was justified in its concerns during that turbulent time. The stock market crash of 1929 had swiftly transformed the Roaring Twenties into the Great Depression. Banks closed their doors, bread lines became a common sight, and so-called Hoovervilles dotted the landscape. Jim Crow policies and racial inequality were facts of life for millions, and much of the nation’s grain belt became a dusty wasteland, fostering a mass exodus of destitute migrants seeking jobs that were no longer available.

The President and his New Deal team worked intensively to address the emergency, but they were simultaneously becoming concerned about the international situation.  As they were well aware, much of the world shared in America’s economic misery, and by the mid-1930s a number of aggressive dictators in Europe and Asia who addressed the global malaise by offering a kind of new fascism had begun to emerge. Americans were overwhelmingly isolationist at the time, and concerned about solving their domestic problems first. FDR had to be content with speaking out against international lawlessness, yet as the end of the decade neared, he also began to muse about the meaning of freedom on a worldwide scale.

During the Great Depression, many people “wanted” for the basic necessities, especially food, clothing and shelter. In addition, during World War II, many items such as sugar, butter, meat, rubber, gasoline, and other things were rationed. Families received coupons limiting the amount of these items that could be purchased during a given amount of time. In Freedom from Want, Norman Rockwell pictures some of life’s necessities clearly, including food, water, shelter, family and friends, in an image that both reflected and shaped our vision of the Thanksgiving holiday.  

Materials:

Multimedia Resources

Classroom Supplies:

• Drawing paper
• Pencils, crayons
• Writing paper

Activities:

• Show Norman Rockwell’s Freedom from Want illustration.

• Review observations and inferences. If you created a graphic organizer, it would be helpful to use it during the review.
• Remind students that Freedom from Want reflects his vision reflecting life in the 1940’s. Ask students to think about what freedom from want would look like today. What elements do they feel continue to reflect freedom from want today, and what additions might they include?
• Following the discussion, direct students to make a picture in their minds of a setting, people, and details that effectively reflect freedom from want today.
• After a few minutes, direct the students to turn and talk to partner(s). They should include information about the details of their image. Students should be able to justify the details they chose to reflect freedom from want.
• When partners have had time for discussion, invite some students to share some of their ideas.
• Tell the students that they will be recreating Rockwell’s illustration for Freedom from Want. Their illustration will show what the artist might have created if he had done the illustration today hearing student ideas.
• Provide students with lined paper to write a brief text to accompany their illustration. Their text should provide support for the details they have chosen to include.
• Follow up with a gallery walk, allowing students to view each other’s illustrations and read the accompanying texts. Observations, comments and thoughts should include similarities and differences between their illustrations, as well as those between their illustrations and Norman Rockwell’s artwork.

Assessment:

• Did students share their thoughts in a way that is appropriate to the task?
• Did they use details to reflect the time period?
• Did their written text tell about their illustration? Is it cohesive and organized?
• Were student observations, comments, and reflections reflective of an understanding of similarities between time periods? Differences?
  
• Are students able to distinguish between needs and wants?