[2] These short literary works mark a shift in Williams’ development as a writer and the expression of his social concerns, influenced by the impact of the Great Depression on American workers and their families.

Literary critic Robert F. Gish comments on the “proletarian spirit” that informs the subjects and themes in The Knife of the Times:Willams felt empathy [for] working-class people, the poor and the disadvantaged, which he characterizes so well in his short stories, depends very much indeed on the power of words [and] the rare and special presence of ordinary speech, ordinary American language, and the “native voice” as he heard it spoken by immigrants and first-generation Americans of various ethnic, cultural, and racial backgrounds.

They were all right.”[9] Literary critic James E. B. Breslin notes that the social and political upheavals of that period “clearly turned Williams’ sympathetic attention to the lower class inhabitants” and to the short story form as the best way to convey their struggles.

In the people among whom he worked [as a physician], the Depression was now revealing qualities that demanded a brief narrative form…The stories collected in The Knife of the Times employ an oral style that relies heavily upon rapid and generalized narration and upon strategic focus on a few banal but authentic details.

[11]Biographer Nasrullah Mambrol discerns the “frequently ambiguous role of healing the sick within an infected society.” that Williams experienced in his career as a physician treating often poverty-stricken immigrant patients.