John Steinbeck was born in February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California. Salinas was an agricultural valley in California. His father was the county treasurer and his mother was a schoolteacher. This is where his education began from a mother that encouraged him to read. The community was a comfortable environment for him to live in because of the encouragement of independence and initiative. His parents didn’t want him to be a writer. They wanted him to have a true profession as a lawyer. His early interest in reading led him through school, with his main interest in science. At age 15 he decided to become a writer, influenced by an English teacher, and faintly remembered by schoolmates for spending so much time in his room writing. After graduating from high school, he went to Stanford University in 1920. While he was there for five he contributed to the school paper by writing poems and comics. He took courses in science and writing, but never received a degree. In 1925, when he left Stanford, he became a marine biologist. He moved to New York in 1925 to work as a reporter for a newspaper. Always being a non-conformist, he was fired from the newspaper for writing opinions instead of facts. This started the many jobs he would be a part of in his lifetime. Some of these jobs include an apprentice hod carrier, an apprentice printer, a working chemist, caretaker of Lake Tahoe Estate, surveyor in Big Sur County, and a fruit picker. He also worked other more physically labored jobs, such as a rancher, road worker, deck hand, cotton picker, and bricklayer. While involved in these jobs, he made many close friends that he came to admire because of their "cant and hypocrisy" which he applauded and whom all of these people soon were characters in his novels. Many of these experiences were the "helpers" to his many novels. His fruit picking and Great Depression led him to write The Grapes of Wrath, his best known and most ambitious of his works. Also, he wrote Of Mice and Men, which was formed from his job as a hired hand on the many farms he worked. Many things affected his writing of the time period of which he wrote. Things like the Great Depression, World War 2, and the Vietnam War are the major influences. World War 2 was when he was working for the federal government as a writer, so his works focused on greed and materialism in the beings of modern civilization, Cannery Row and The Wayward Bus are two good examples of this idea.
1925: He went to New York City, working odd jobs, including manual labor for the
These groups fought continuously against the restrictions imposed onto them, a discriminatory government, and the forced mixture of American culture and that of the minorities culture in which resulted in the “Melting Pot.” Additionally, Limerick used excerpts of documentations from several governments in which imposed these restrictions and acts on the afore discussed minorities in addition to personal experiences from both ends of the spectrum. Moreover, through the use of these personal statements, we are allotted the insight to the original discrimination minority Americans experienced in addition to explaining parts of history that most people do not often
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.
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.
John Steinbeck was perhaps the best author of all time. He was the winner of a Nobel Prize, and among other accomplishments, Steinbeck published nineteen novels and made many movies during his lifetime. All of his experience and knowledge are shown through his novels. A reader can tell, just in reading a novel by Steinbeck, that he had been through a lot throughout his life. Also, Steinbeck worked very hard to accomplish everything that he did during his lifetime. Nothing came very easily to him, and he had to earn everything he owned. This helped him in his writing, because he was able to write about real people and real experiences. John Steinbeck got his inspiration from life experiences, people he knew, and places he had gone.
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.
The United States of America, being a country founded by immigrants, is known all over the world as the land of great opportunities. People from all walks of life travelled across the globe, taking a chance to find a better life for them and their family. Over the years, the population of immigrants has grown immensely, resulting in the currently controversial issue of illegal immigration. Illegal immigrants are the people who have overstayed the time granted on their US, visa or those who have broken the federal law by crossing the border illegally. Matt O’Brien stated in his article “The government thinks that 10.8 million illegal immigrants lived in the country in January 2009, down from a peak of nearly 12 million in 2007.”(Para, 2) While some argue that illegal immigrants burden the United States of America and its economy, others believe that they have become essential and are an important part of the US, economy.
As an effect legal immigration would make way for new jobs and if more people had more jobs they would more likely invest in the economy. Many immigrants remain illegal due to the long and rigorous applications and tests required to become a legal citizen. As well as hard tests, the fee to apply is a substantial amount especially for poor immigrants looking to immigrate for economic reasons (Swain). Many immigrants protest to lower fees to allow for a more efficient way to gain citizenship. Politicians debate on whether to lower fees often (EdTech). Many politicians believe if the fees where lowered it would allow a large number of immigrants into America. Allowing large number of immigrants could have both positive and negative effects. Crime rates could be increased, at the same time jobs would be created and the economy would begin to increase due to the amount of money spent in
Immigration is what has made America what it is today. America expresses concerns of the growing immigrant population, but those concerns vary and are expressed with intensity by the different segments of the population. There is immigrants all over the world seeking for a better future. Some of these countries where these immigrants come from are from Mexico, Canada, and china. Most of the immigrants here in America are Mexican. They are known to come with big groups, such as their families. It is easy to get from Mexico to the U.S because of the border, they are parallel to each other which makes it equal to seek a new life in
There are different ways to look at the national issue of immigration. There are a lot of people against immigration for various reasons. One main one would be, that as a nation we fail to punish illegal activity, which in return encourages more illegal activity, inspire offenders, breeds public distrust, and confuses others from adhering to laws. Illegal activity that goes unpenalized, menaces American ethics of law and order. Criminal demeanors should not be tolerated, nor illegal aliens that show condescension for the ideals and laws that make America the land of freedom and ambition. These types of criminals exploit the hospitality and tenderness of the American society. These such...
According to the United States Department of Labor, more foreign born immigrants are self employed than the native born here in the U.S. Immigration has both its negative and positive effects on the economy. For example on the positive side, immigrants are taxpayers, entrepreneurs, job creators, and consumers, and on the negative side, they are using government services that should not be provided to them. Even though the positive and the negative both outweigh each other, it is a very debatable topic that may never be resolved. Immigration has been occurring for hundreds of years, immigrants fled from their country looking to fulfill their wants and needs. Immigration impacts the economy negatively and positively through the workforce, and
Illegal immigration has been a big problem in the United States and the number of immigrants keeps on increasing. Many Americans have mixed feelings on this debatable issue. Some think that Illegal Immigration benefits the economy while many others believe that they are more of a burden than a help. According to the Illegal Immigration Statistics website, there is a population of 11.7 million illegal immigrants living in the United States as of March 2012. All of the 11.7 illegal immigrants do not pay taxes, but they utilize Americans taxes in many government programs. Illegal immigration does not benefit the economy and should be a door that should be closed off.
Since the early 2000’s illegally immigration increased drastically; more and more people from Latin America have immigrating to this country. Not like the Ellis Island, where immigrants were welcomed in one station, this time they have multiple access where there not so welcome, “Entering the United States illegally is risky; unauthorized immigrants must either use falsified documents to deceive an immigration official, come ashore by boat without being detected, or sneak across the nation 's land borders with Mexico or Canada—which the government spends about $18 billion a year to protect” (Immigration Policy). Most of this people risk their life in order to come here, but why? They are after the American dream. The countries where these people are coming from have little to zero opportunities; most of them live in poverty forcing them to take the long journey to the American dream. This journey has many effects, it not only affects America but also those countries from where people are immigrating. Some people in the U.S. believe that immigrants are destroying the nation, “The population today includes a far higher percentage (12 percent) of foreign-born Americans than in recent decades, yet the economy is strong, with higher total gross domestic product (GDP), higher GDP per person, higher productivity per worker, and more Americans working than
When he was young he didn 't have much friends, so he passed the time by writing. “He started writing short stories at the age of fifteen”(UXL Encyclopedia). Another influence on his writing was from a farm labor organizer who he had interviewed in 1933. He was hiding from the authorities for taking part in a cotton strike in California(UXL Encyclopedia). This impacted Steinbeck to start writing about the lower class of society. John Steinbeck wrote his books during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl era. John steinbeck had a couple of life experiences and time periods that influenced him to write.
In Bloom’s How to Write about John Steinbeck, Catherine Kordich wrote, “Steinbeck made understandable the misunderstood. His books depict the experience of the common person, the powerless, and the underdog with conviction, empathy and poignancy” (48). John Steinbeck used the mass movements and events of the age in which he wrote to create characters understand the grand scheme of their time (Kordich 49). He connected with the people of America on a personal level by writing about their social and economic problems. Steinbeck is worthy of the Nobel Prize because he spoke to the growing feeling of disillusionment in America. This disillusionment is portrayed through the characters and their experiences in Of Mice and Men and East of Eden