This film was written and produced in the midst of the Great Depression and the portrayal of poverty and unemployment is very evident throughout the film. From an academic point of view, the film accurately depicts the lifestyle of a factory worker over a period of time. Workers would stand on an assembly line and repeat the same action day after day. The film also describes the transition of human dependence on machines very well. The workers would work at the pace of the machines. The film also contained metaphors of humans being controlled by machines when the lead actor was sucked into a machine's pulley system. In the film there is also a scene where there is a machine that automatically feeds humans. Moving outside the factory, the film depicted the extremely poor living conditions of people during the Great Depression. Many people lived in dilapidated shacks. However, the film failed to depict the vastness of the people living in these shacks, as it only shows the main character's shack. Connecting to living conditions, the film also shows that many people have difficulty putting food on the table. In many cases people were forced to steal food to survive. The film also very briefly depicts the audience's political insecurities when the main character is arrested for "participating" in a communist uprising.