John Steinbeck was born on February 27th, 1902 in Salinas, California. The region is known for being culturally diverse with a rich history of migration and immigrant history (Shillinglaw). The region was often called the “salad bowl of the nation” for its high output of produce (Shillinglaw). His parents weren’t broke, but were relatively poor (Biography). Is father, John Ernst Steinbeck, bounced between jobs, owning a store which sold feed and grain, managing a flour plant, and acted as the treasurer of Monterrey County (Biography). Before his parents were married, his mother was a teacher (Biography). Steinbeck had three sisters (Biography).
The two older ones were Beth and Ester, and the younger one was Mary (Shillinglaw). Steinbeck was described as intelligent but rather shy (Biography). He had a love of nature and created his own names for different kinds of plants (Shillinglaw). He wanted to be a writer when he was 14, and there are stories of him locking himself in his room to write (Biography). He was able to earn enough money to attend Stanford University (Nobel). After six unproductive years, he dropped out and eventually moved to New York at the age of 23, trying and failing to become a freelance writer (Biography, Nobel). Instead, he began working in manual labor (Biography). For a while, he worked as a contruction worker and a reporter, but gave it up (Biography). After moving back to California, Steinbeck published his first novels and short stories (Nobel).
Use your promo and get a custom paper on
"Biography of John Steinbeck".
Steinbeck’s first novel was Cup of Gold in 1929 (Biography). This was the same year that he met his first wife, Carol (Biography). Carol began to carry most of the family income while Steinbeck concentrated on his writing career (Biography). He became known when he published Tortilla Flat in 1935, which was when he was 37 (Nobel). He wrote mostly about working class economic issues, many of his stories taking place on farms and in rural areas (Nobel). Some of his works highlight amazement with the beauty of soil and nature, though most are grim in a matter-of-fact way (Nobel). He believed in an essential bond between humans and their environments, which was reflected strongly in his works (Shillinglaw).
His works became more dour after Tortilla Flats, as he came to write In Dubious Battle, which is about migrant worker strikes, and Of Mice and Men, which he wrote in 1937, which is about a large, mentally challenged farmer (Nobel). That next year, he published a series of short stories called The Long Valley, and the year after that he published The Grapes of Wrath, which is about farmers in Oklahoma who became migrant workers when their farm couldn’t support them (Nobel). The piece is known as his most ambitious novel, depicting the mood and angst of America during the Great Depression (Biography). Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize for The Grapes of Wrath, and a National Book Award on top of this (Biography). It sold 10,000 copies when most famous (Biography).
Outside of his writing career, Steinbeck served in World War II as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune (Biography). He also traveled with his friend, Edward F. Ricketts, through Mexico to collect samples of marine life (Biography). This led to the book, Sea of Cortez, in 1941 (Biography).
Before he died in 1968, John Steinbeck published Travels With Charley, which is based on a three-month truck trip he took across forty states (Nobel). He died of a heart attack in his New York City home on December 20th, 1968 (Biography).
On Mice and Men ties to John Steinbeck’s experience regarding working class dreams being crushed by forces like the Great Depression (Brown). The two characters have dreams owning land and becoming self-sufficient, but these dreams naturally must be crushed (Brown). The piece carries Steinbeck’s fiery hatred of oppression and exploitation, as the easily manipulated Lennie is taken advantage of again and again (Brown). He describes the title as “simply recording what ‘is,’” grimly but detachedly reporting the reality of the world (Shillinglaw). The piece does not hold back, containing curses and racial slurs, and a rather terrifying homicide or two which still find their way onto school reading lists (Brown). The piece also draws attention given the two male characters who travel together, take care of each other, and dream of living together (Brown). In the 1990’s, Of Mice and Men was the second most frequently banned book (About). Still, in its day and even now, the piece does not draw nearly as much attention as The Grapes of Wrath, which Steinbeck published two years afterward (Biography).
- “John Steinbeck – Biographical.” Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969
- “John Steinbeck.” 2013. The Biography Channel website. Sep 19 2013
- Brown, Nate. “On John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.” PEN America. N.p., 15 Oct. 2012. Web. 19 Sept. 2013.
