This is a simple piece that I had made with the help of christophecaran's bear design. This design represents the decline and absolute devastation of the US’s market economy during the Great Depression. It is a gumball machine that dispenses gumballs into the mouth of a bear. What does this mean? One of the main reasons that the Great Depression occurred was because of the overtrust in the stock market which led to its zombification. Everyone believed that they would make money off of the stock market. As more and more people became involved with the stock market, this encouraged a very dangerous mentality which led to inflated stock prices. A “bubble” was created where people believed that stocks were worth more than they actually were hence the idea of using bubble gum as the representation of what was feeding the bear. This bubble was particularly dangerous because before the crash, there was already great amounts of unemployment and the slowing down of production due to the fact that people were no longer consuming products. The bear, if not already apparent, symbolizes the bear market: the metaphor for a downwards stock trend. The bear symbolizes this because when attacking, it swings it claws downwards. The opposite of this, the bull market, is when the stock market is trending up; this is because when the bull attacks, it thrusts its horns upwards. People didn’t trust banks at the time which contributed to destroying the economy even more. People began to distrust the bank and started to pull out money with the thought that banks would become bankrupt. For this to happen, however, people had to pull out money from banks and ruin the loaning system. The banks ended up not having any more money and failed because of this. The flat part in front of the slope is a representation that the gumballs won’t fall into the mouth of the bear unless enough of them are there to push the gumballs over the edge. The wealth gap was a large contributor to the Great Depression as well. The gumball machine is large in comparison to the bear because the gumball machine represents industry, money, and status which alludes to the fact that people who had control over these things were so large that they had crushed the small and weak. Another aspect that was implemented into the design was having the knob of the gumball machine above the coin slot, which is uncommon for gumball machines. This is the final point that when people go to turn the coin, their hand will be blocking the sight of the coin entering the gumball machine similar to how people lost sight of themselves entering money into the stock market without thought. They couldn’t see where their money was going to and blindly trusting that they would make money.