John Steinbeck Biography

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Few true American authors have had the opportunity to experience as remarkable a period of time as John Steinbeck did. With world-changing events such as the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War, Steinbeck had an enormous wealth of firsthand experiences to write about. Arguably one of the best known American realist writers, John Steinbeck's works, such as Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath, helped to paint a picture of the struggles undergone by migrant workers in the American southwest during the Great Depression.
Born in Salinas, California on February 27, 1902 to a county accountant and a former school teacher, Steinbeck's home life helped foster his love of reading and writing. Because of this, he declared at age 14 that he only wanted to become a writer (Biography in depth). During his summers, he worked as hired help on several nearby ranches, which would later serve as inspiration for The Red Pony stories. After nearly dying from pneumonia in 1918, Steinbeck graduated from Salinas High School in 1919 and went to Stanford as an English major (New World Encyclopedia). In 1925, after several years of sporadic attendance, Steinbeck dropped out of Stanford and moved to New York City in order to pursue his dream of becoming a writer (French 13). This, however, was not his big break, and moved to his parents' summer home in Pacific Grove, California in 1928 (New World Encyclopedia).
While living in Pacific Grove, Steinbeck was living on various degrees of financial support from his parents. This changed when, in 1929, Steinbeck received a $2,250 advance for publishing his first novel, Cup of Gold, which he had written while working as a caretaker for a Lake Tahoe estate (Biography in depth). He also m...

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...the son of Ma and Pa Joad, is paroled after serving four years for manslaughter (Bloom 18). Tom travels home only to find out that his family's farm has gone bankrupt and that the Joad family is loading up the family car in preparation for the journey to California (Bloom 27). Tom warns them that by travelling with them outside of Oklahoma, he is in violation of his parole and could get them all in trouble, but the family decides to take him along anyway. After completing their drive along Route 66, the Joads arrive in California only to find that the prospects for work that they had been told about were just myths and they move into a local Hooverville (Bloom 33). The novel ends as Rose of Sharon, Tom's younger sister who has by the end of the novel given birth to a stillborn child, offers her breast to a starving man as an attempt to keep him alive (Bloom 43).

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