Comparing John Steinbeck's Cannery Row And Tortilla Flat

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Steinbeck writes about real people and real life problems, as opposed to previous literary styles that were written with fantasy and exaggeration. Steinbeck was the first American author to take a sociological approach to his novels. Steinbeck writes about poor, working class people in his novels Cannery Row and Tortilla Flat. Many of his novel’s characters are people he knew in his life or are based on his beliefs about how the world and the people in it should be. Steinbeck’s life began in Salinas, California where he was born on February 27, 1902 (Commire 3). He was the son of John Ernst, a country treasurer, and Olive Steinbeck, a school teacher (Commire 4). Steinbeck was known to be lazy, mischievous, and spoiled to his neighbors, friends, …show more content…

The two men become best friends and shared a love for natural history and marine biology (Ho 24). Later, Steinbeck went through periods of depression, despite his success. During this period his writing matured and improved greatly (Ho 34). His fourth published book in six years, Tortilla Flat, was a huge success and became his first commercial success and a literary classic (Ho 33). However, the death of his father overshadowed the joy of publishing Tortilla Flat (Ho 35). Soon after the success of Tortilla Flat, Steinbeck decided to turn it into a film in 1942. The success of this film motivated him to put more of his works in theaters (Ho 38). He turned Of Mice and Men which was published in 1937, into a play and it was a huge success (Ho 42). After studying the migrant workers, Steinbeck wrote his novel, Grapes of Wrath (Ho 48). Although Steinbeck thought it wouldn’t be popular due to its grim theme, it happened to be his most successful novel yet, selling 90,000 copies in 1939 (Ho 49). The novel received criticism for his portrayal of the migrants but received praise from Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt (Ho 52). Because of the success of

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