Out of the Dust Literary Elements

Historical Fiction; Children's Literature; Novel in Verse; Coming of Age

The novel is set in the Oklahoma Panhandle in 1934 and 1935 during the Dust Bowl, a phenomenon that saw severe soil erosion and dust storms affect the livelihoods of farmers throughout the Great Plains region.

Billie Jo Kelby is the novel's narrator; the point of view stays with her.

The tone is poetic and introspective; the mood is mournful with glimmers of optimism.

Billie Jo is the protagonist; the primary antagonists include her father, her mother, and Mad Dog Craddock.

The major conflict is that Billie Jo longs to get "out of the dust" and escape the sadness and strife of her life on a drought-stricken family farm.

The story reaches its climax when Billie Jo leaves Oklahoma in a boxcar, only to realize that her desire to escape was merely a fantasy; she would prefer to work through her problems with her father and learn to thrive at home.

Early in the novel, Billie Jo expresses a wish to see red poppies grow on their dried-up farm like her father saw growing on the graves of fallen soldiers when he served in France. This foreshadows the image of poppies growing on the grave of Ma and Franklin.

In an allusion to the Civilian Conservation Corps, a jobs program created by the federal government to employ young men during the Great Depression, Billie Jo wishes she could sign up for the CCC while lamenting that she isn't old enough and wouldn't be accepted as a female.

Hesse includes an example of olfactory imagery when Billie Jo describes the scent of her mother's apple tree blossoms: "I stand under the trees and let the petals fall into my hair, a blizzard of sweet-smelling flowers."

Toward the end of the book, Billie Jo comments on the things she appreciates about Louise, her father's new girlfriend: "And what I like best about her, is Louise doesn’t say what I should do. She just nods. And I know she’s heard everything I said, and some things I didn’t say too." In this paradox, Billie Jo speaks of Louise hearing "things I didn't say," by which she means that Louise understands the significance of Billie Jo's avoidance of certain emotionally difficult subjects.

As she tries to get her burned hands functioning again, Billie Jo practices the piano, commenting: “I sit at the school piano and make my hands work. In spite of the pain, in spite of the stiffness and scars.” In this example of parallelism—the use of successive verbal constructions—Billie Jo repeats "in spite of" to emulate the way she must repeat measures of music while struggling to relearn how to play.

When a massive dust storm blows through the farm, Billie Jo personifies the dust by describing the sound it makes on the windows as hissing.