John Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, to John and Olive Hamilton Steinbeck in Salinas, which was a small town in northern California. Steinbeck read a lot as a youth and he was most influenced by Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d’ Arthur. In 1919, he had graduated from Salinas High School and then went to Sanford University, but even though he studied a lot, he left without getting a degree.
Steinbeck later in 1925, moved to New York City where he worked for a newspaper called the New York American. He wasn’t good at reporting because he always got into what he wrote so he went back to California to work on a ship. Steinbeck later got a job in Nevada as a caretaker where he wrote and produced a story about adventure in 1929. One year later, he married a woman named Carol Henning and they both moved and settled in Pacific Grove, California.
The first three books Steinbeck wrote were largely unnoticed. His first one that actually got noticed was Tortilla Flat. Tortilla Flat was Steinbeck’s first book where it became a movie and he received $3000 for the movie rights. That money had lifted him up from being so poor in the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.
Years later, in 1939, John Steinbeck wrote a book called The Grapes of Wrath which is on the “Top 100 Books of All Time”. The Grapes of Wrath took place during the Great Depression. A lot of Americans loved it and a lot didn’t. Californian farmers hated it because it said things about them. So First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt called for “congressional hearings on migrant worker camp conditions”.
Steinbeck went around places, asking how it was living there and what farm workers did. He was disgusted and just hated all the suffering and heartbreak that he had witnessed. So St...
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... a voice with people who didn’t have a voice with the stories The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden.
Many people had said that Steinbeck’s works were raw or lacking good taste. He never liked being in the public and all the criticism annoyed him, but it never stopped him from his commitment of his works. Today, John Steinbeck still remains to be one of the most popular and respected American authors of the 19th century.
WORKS SITED
Bloom, Harold. John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1996. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 25 Feb. 2014.
Shmoop Editorial Team. "The Grapes of Wrath." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 25 Feb. 2014.
Coers, Donald V. John Steinbeck As Propagandist : The Moon Is Down Goes To War. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 26 Feb. 2014.
Levant, Howard. The Novels of John Steinbeck: a Critical Study. Columbia: U of Missouri Press, 1974.
John Steinbeck was born in 1902, in California's Salinas Valley, a region that would eventually serve as the setting for Of Mice and Men, as well as many of his other works. He studied literature and writing at Stanford University. He then moved to New York City and worked as a laborer and journalist for five years, until he completed his first novel in 1929, Cup of Gold. With the publication of Tortilla Flat in 1935, Steinbeck achieved fame and became a popular author. He wrote many novels about the California laboring class. Two of his more famous novels included Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck got the title for Of Mice and Men from a line of Robert Burns, a Scottish poet, “The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry." In Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck includes the theme of loyalty and sacrifice between friends. Steinbeck illustrates the loyalty and sacrifice between friends through the friendship of Lennie and George.
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel written by John Steinbeck, which focuses on an Oklahoman family that is evicted from their farm during an era of depression caused by the Dust Bowl. The Joad family alongside thousands of other refugees (also affected by the dirty thirties) migrates west towards California seeking employment and a new home. John Steinbeck’s purpose for writing this novel was to inform his audience of how many of their fellow Americans were being mistreated and of the tribulations they faced in order to attain regain what they once had. As a result, The Grapes of Wrath triggered its audience’s sympathy for the plight of the Dust Bowl farmers and their families.
I. John Steinbeck used his personal experiences as a laborer to write many of his novels like Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath.
Steinbeck went through many trials throughout his lifetime (French). He went through a lot of phases in his life that were not easy to deal with (French). Although not all of his life experiences were good, they all helped him to improve his writing. This is comparable to the saying "Whatever does not kill you, makes you stronger." This is the case with Steinbeck, because all of his experiences made him stronger, not only in his life, but in his writing. Several things that improved his writing through life experiences were, when he was a ranch hand, when he was a marine biologist, and when he wrote war transcripts during World War Two. These examples were all used in Steinbeck's writing, thus proving that Steinbeck used his life experiences in his works.
Hayashi, Tetsumaro. A New Study Guide to Steinbeck's Major Works, with Critical Explications. Scarecrow Press, Jan 1, 1993
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, is a novel depicting the Okies migration to California during the period in history known as The Dustbowl. In this novel Steinbeck attempts to display the tensions between the Okies and the Californians. This display can be closely compared to today’s tensions between citizens born in the US and the Immigrants. Great pieces of literature are timeless in the lessons they teach and the controversy they portray.
John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath, is one of the most influential books in American History, and is considered to be his best work by many. It tells the story of one family’s hardship during the Depression and the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s. The Joads were a hard-working family with a strong sense of togetherness and morals; they farmed their land and went about their business without bothering anyone. When the big drought came it forced them to sell the land they had lived on before anyone could remember. Their oldest son, Tom, has been in jail the past four years and returns to find his childhood home abandoned.
Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men. John Steinbeck centennial ed. New York: Penguin, 2002. Print.
In addition to East of Eden, Steinbeck produced many other novels and several volumes of short fiction in his early career. Most of Steinbeck’s novels and stories are set in the Salinas Valley in California where he spent most of his life. Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel, Grapes of Wrath which makes him best known. According to John Timmerman, ”Grapes of Wrath studies the problems migrant workers encountered while traveling from Oklahoma to California.” (1) Steinbeck wrote eighteen books through his life span. Some of his novels included Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, Tortilla Flat, The Moon is Down, The Red Pony, and many others. Of Mice and Men gained Steinbeck national recognition. Saint Katy the Virgin, Nothing So Monstrous, The Long Valley, How Edith McGillcuddy, and The Crapshooter are Steinbeck’s volumes of short stories.
John Steinbeck (1902-1968) was an award winning American author who published novels, short stories, screenplays, and travel narratives. Steinbeck’s highly detailed and in-depth writing style contributed to him producing emotionally moving works of literature. Focusing on the cruelty and hopelessness of the world, Steinbeck can be accredited as a naturalistic writer as he exemplified these ideas in many of his works. Growing up in a fertile valley, Steinbeck “developed a deep appreciation for the environment” (Shillinglaw); fueling his desire to accurately portray the struggles of everyday life. John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat uses naturalistic literary philosophy to examine how heredity, environment, and circumstance influence the lives of human beings.
Steinbeck got the inspiration to write this book in the summer of 1922 through his experience at Spreckels Sugar Company Ranch. He worked there with Filipino and Mexican labor. The landscape of the book was familiar to where he worked. He worked in an oasis type river and renamed the location to a place called Soledad which meant solitude (Hays)...
John Steinbeck wrote the The Grapes of Wrath in 1939 to rouse its readers against those who were responsible for keeping the American people in poverty. The Grapes of Wrath tells the story of the Joad family, migrant farmers from Oklahoma traveling to California in search of an illusion of prosperity. The novel's strong stance stirred up much controversy, as it was often called Communist propaganda, and banned from schools due to its vulgar language. However, Steinbeck's novel is considered to be his greatest work. It won the Pulitzer Prize, and later became an Academy Award winning movie in 1940. The novel and the movie are both considered to be wonderful masterpieces, epitomizing the art of filmmaking and novel-writing.
Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is a realistic novel that mimics life and offers social commentary too. It offers many windows on real life in midwest America in the 1930s. But it also offers a powerful social commentary, directly in the intercalary chapters and indirectly in the places and people it portrays. Typical of very many, the Joads are driven off the land by far away banks and set out on a journey to California to find a better life. However the journey breaks up the family, their dreams are not realized and their fortunes disappear. What promised to be the land of milk and honey turns to sour grapes. The hopes and dreams of a generation turned to wrath. Steinbeck opens up this catastrophe for public scrutiny.
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel by John Steinbeck that exposes the desperate conditions under which the migratory farm families of America during the 1930's live under. The novel tells of one families migration west to California through the great economic depression of the 1930's. The Joad family had to abandon their home and their livelihoods. They had to uproot and set adrift because tractors were rapidly industrializing their farms. The bank took possession of their land because the owners could not pay off their loan. The novel shows how the Joad family deals with moving to California. How they survive the cruelty of the land owners that take advantage of them, their poverty and willingness to work.