Novelist John Steinbeck

Introduction

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1962, John Ernst Steinbeck secured his place in American literature largely on the basis of his inimitable novel The Grapes of Wrath, which defined an epoch in American life by brilliantly combining the documentary quality of journalism with the superior insight of highly imaginative fiction. John Steinbeck's upbringing and experiences in Salinas, California, generated an intense devotion to the less fortunate, especially migrant workers of the Midwestern and Western United States. Steinbeck's early reading helped generate the idealism evident throughout his work(George 115-117). Primarily, however, the concrete dilemmas of the working class absorbed Steinbeck, given his work with paisanos but also his employment as a laborer in New York and as a fish sorter near Lake Tahoe. Personal struggles during the Great Depression (Steinbeck published no commercially successful literature until 1935) furthered his interest in the matter-of-fact problems of the poor, as did his personal observation of labor unrest. Steinbeck's most compelling characters include the simpleminded migrant Lennie in Of Mice and Men and the impoverished Joad family of migrants in The Grapes of Wrath.

Thesis Statement

John Steinbeck books and stories are a chronicle of social history of man's social problems; the social problems that he faces in a society.

Biographical Info

John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California in 1902 and attended Stanford University intermittently between 1920 and 1926. Steinbeck did not graduate from Stanford, but instead chose to support himself through manual labor while writing. His experiences among the working classes in California lent authenticity to his depiction of the lives of the workers who are the central characters of his most important novels. Steinbeck spent much of his life in Monterey County, which later was the setting of some of his fiction(Timmerman 33-39).

Historical Data

Steinbeck's first novel, Cup of Gold was published in 1929, and was followed three years later by The Pastures of Heaven and, in 1933, To a God Unknown. However, these first three novels were unsuccessful both critically and commercially. Nevertheless, his subsequent novel, In Dubious Battle (1936) was marked by an unrelenting grimness(Walcutt 258- 59). Steinbeck received even greater acclaim for the novella Of Mice and Men (1937), a tragic story about the strange, complex bond between two migrant laborers. His crowning achievement, The Grapes of Wrath, won Steinbeck a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award. It was also adapted into a classic film directed by John Ford that was name one of the American Film Institute's one hundred greatest films.

During the second world war, Steinbeck wrote some effective pieces of government propaganda, among them The Moon Is Down (1942), a novel of Norwegians under the Nazis. He also served as a war correspondent. While containing the elements of social criticism that marked his earlier work, the three novels Steinbeck published immediately following the war Cannery Row (1945), The Pearl and The Bus (both 1947) were more sentimental and relaxed in approach(Walcutt 258- 59).

Analysis of The Grapes of Wrath, The Pearl and the Cannery Row

Summary: The ...