In 1937, though, Steinbeck got his first taste of real success. Now living in Los Gatos, California, he had four novels and a play published in just three years. He burst onto the literary scene with Of Mice and Men, and published the first three parts of The Red Pony the same year. The play of Of Mice and Men went on stage and won the Drama Critics' Circle Award. The next year, he published The Long Valley and the last part of The Red Pony. His big project for the year, however, was working and researching a great novel, to be published in 1939 under the title The Grapes of Wrath. With this book, Steinbeck insured his future in the literary world. The book was so controversial that Steinbeck had to worry about attempts on his life or reputation; even now, it (along with Of Mice and Men) often are found on lists of commonly banned books. It was so well thought of that it earned him a Pulitzer Prize. It was so influential that President Franklin D. Roosevlet met with Steinbeck personally after a letter to the President from Steinbeck about the German influence in Mexico. Steinbeck had been in Mexico working on a film, and throughout the rest of his life, motion pictures were a second medium for him. The film of Of Mice and Men was released in 1939, and the film of The Grapes of Wrath came out ...
World War II which happened from 1939 to 1945 was the largest armed conflict in human history. It spanned over six continents and caused over fifty million deaths inclusive of both civilians and military personnel (Brinkley). The second war gave life to new problems. One major result of World War II was the start of the Great Depression. The depression brought Hitler to the zenith and helped the democracy of Germany and Europe. It was also instrumental in propelling Japan into conquest (Roberts). World War II also ended America’s isolation from the rest of the world which resulted in the formation of the United Nations (Brinkley). The war began when Nazi Germany attacked Poland in September 1939. Even then the United States had stood their grounds and decided not to intervene. Eventually, they did when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, in December of 1941. The start of World War II led to many unthinkable events. Many lives were lost and more importantly Japanese Americans were subjected to living in internment camps. Japan joined forces with the Allied powers but, played a small role in fighting German forces in East Asia. After a Paris Peace conference of 1919, Japan’s aim of making peace was shunned by Britain, Australia and the United States. World War II was by far the most horrific tragedy of its time and signified the end of a brutal and bloody war over democracy.
I leave you with these final words: ‘The demand for the fullest exploitation of material and human resources for increased production, the use of blockades and intensive bombing of civilian targets made the war of 1939 even more total, that is, comprehensive and intense than that of 1914.” (Kolag, 2001)
His father was John Ernst Steinbeck and his mother was Olive Hamilton Steinbeck (DeMott xiv). Steinbeck’s life was rather unremarkable until his enrollment in Stanford University in 1919 where, he took courses in English and literature intermittently until 1925 when he left the university without obtaining a degree. Steinbeck wrote 17 novels in total during his career as an author, including his three of his most successful: In Dubious Battle, written in 1936, Of Mice and Men, written in 1937, and the book that was the pinnacle of his career: The Grapes of Wrath, which was written in 1939 (Penguin Group I). Steinbeck had a personal interest in telling the stories of the agricultural workers, as he spent the summers of his youth working on nearby ranches and sugar beet farms with migrant workers (“John Steinbeck”). Although Steinbeck spent months researching and interviewing migrant workers as a basis for the novel, he only spent four short months writing The Grapes of Wrath: as a result, Steinbeck was extremely concerned that he would not be able to accurately portray the migrant workers plight to the American public (DeMott vii-viii). When his novel finally hit the shelves, it became an unimaginable success, selling over 400,000 copies in its first year and becoming the number one bestseller of 1939 (DeMott viii-ix). The novel’s success did not end there, in 1940 The Grapes of Wrath
Mingst, K. A. (2011). Essentials of international relations. (5th ed., p. 79). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
Salinas, California, John Steinbeck dropped out of college and worked as a manual laborer. This was before he achieved success as a writer. John Steinbeck won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for his 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath. The award winning novel was about the migration of families during the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. His book Of Mice and Men was published two years before his award winning novel. That was also when he was recognized as a serious author. After his great success, he served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune during World War II. After the war, Steinbeck continued to write, and he received the Nobel Prize for Literature for his realistic and imaginative writings in 1962. Unfortunately, on December
During the 1930s, a world war had been brewing and countries eventually joined in the war picking sides. In other words, the Axis Powers were against the Allied Powers. The Axis Powers consisted of Germany, Italy, Japan, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria versus Britain, France, Russia, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Greece, Poland, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Yugoslavia, Netherlands and the United States. The attack on Pearl Harbor occurred on December 7, 1941. Furthermore, it was an initiated attack by the Japanese without warning. Plans of the surprise attack were brewing in early January that year. This attack eventually brought America into the world war. However, was it worth it?
John Steinbeck started with some struggles and grew up in a rough time period, but he proved that nothing would stop him and he went on to win multiple Pulitzer Prizes and won the crowd with his publication of The Grapes of Wrath. While he started out as a private boy who was made fun of as a young boy, Steinbeck took every opportunity to advance himself as a great American writer.
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.
In 1939, John Ernest Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath. Born in Salinas, California on February 27, 1902, Steinbeck came from a family of “modest” means. John Steinbeck Sr. held multiple jobs, while Olive Steinbeck was a schoolteacher. Passing on a love of reading and writing to her son, from the age of 14 Steinbeck wanted to be a writer. After graduating high school, Steinbeck enrolled at Stanford in 1919; however, by 1925 he left college without receiving a degree. After a brief stay in New York, Steinbeck returned to California where he released his first novel Cup of Gold (1929). Many more novels were published including his first real success Tortilla Flats (1935), followed by Of Mice and Men (1937), and his most renowned work The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Written only a few years after the height of the Great Depression, the novel won Steinbeck a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1940, for portraying the hardships faced by migrant workers in California. The Second World War led Steinbeck to the New York Herald Tribune as a war correspondent. Finally in 1962, a few short years before Steinbeck would die of heart disease, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Mingst, Karen A. Essentials of International Relations. New York : W.W. Norton & Co., 2008.
Robert Frost was born in San Franciso on March 26, 1874, but later moved to Lawrence, Massachuschusetts (after his father died) where he did most of his writing. He was a simple man who taught, worked in a mill, was a reporter, was a New England farmer, and wrote. Throughout his life he had always been interested in literature. He attended Dartmouth College, but remained less than one semester. In 1894 he sold his first work “My Butterfly: An Elegy” to a New York journal. A year later he married Elinor White. From 1897 to 1899 he attended Harvard College as a special student but left before he acquired his degree. For the next ten years he wrote poems, operated a farm in Derry, New Hampshire, and taught at Derry’s Pinkerton Academy.
John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath in response to the Great Depression. Steinbeck's intentions were to publicize the movements of a fictional family affected by the Dust Bowl that was forced to move from their homestead. Also a purpose of Steinbeck's was to criticize the hard realities of a dichotomized American society.
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.
Kent, J. and Young, J.W. (2013), International Relations Since 1945: A global History. 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.