Steinbeck Background Info

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

Common Characteristics of

Steinbeck’s WritingMost 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

Steinbeck Novels

East of Eden

Of Mice and Men

Grapes of Wrath

Cannery Row

The Pearl

The Red Pony

The Moon is Down

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

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

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.”