Steinbeck Background Info

1. Steinbeck Background Info

2. John Steinbeck • 1902-1968 • Believed in the political power of fiction and wrote to deliver a message • Born in California’s Salinas Valley • Worked a variety of jobs in his youth: fruit picker, painter, scientist’s lab assistant, etc. • Of Mice and Men (1937) was his first literary success • Won Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and Nobel in in 1962

3. Common Characteristics of Steinbeck’s Writing • Most take place in the Salinas Valley • Many works take place in the Great Depression • Works known as “Dust Bowl fiction” • Mostly focuses on the lower class

4. Steinbeck Novels • East of Eden • Of Mice and Men • Grapes of Wrath • Cannery Row • The Pearl • The Red Pony • The Moon is Down

5. The Grapes of Wrath • Steinbeck spent 2 years living and working with “Okies” • This experience inspired The Grapes of Wrath, for which he won the Pulitzer • Story of a family displaced from the Oklahoma dust bowl who found poverty and exploitation in California, in lieu of the wages and land for which they had hoped

6. Of Mice and Men • Concentrates on two displaced migrant ranch workers • Appears in the American Library Association’s list of Most Challenged Books of the 21st Century • Based on “To a Mouse” by Robert Burns

7. Quotes from To a Mouse • “The best laid schemes ‘o mice and men gang aft agley.” • “The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.”