It all seemed as if everything interesting happened in the 1920’s-1930’s. The roaring 20’s many dream of being able to live in this era reasons being for books like The Great Gatsby which described the 1920’s to be something that was completely different than what actually occurred. When the decade of the 20’s was almost over things began to get a little patchy such as the occurrence of: the price of the cotton plummeting (downwards) 1920, passing of the 18th amendment (the prohibition of alcohol) 1920, everybody’s favorite The Stock Market Crash 1929, and The Dust Bowl 1935. Flappers dancing around, people buying from speakeasies, and prices of cotton going to their all time low. What do these have in common?…
“I Remember the Thirties” The author says the decade had "a beginning, middle and end. " His essay also has this structure. Briefly describe these three sections in Steinbeck's essay.…
The 1930s was a time filled with change and hardship. After the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the most devastating stock market crash in American history, the vast majority of the decade was crippled by a financial ruin called the Great Depression that had a traumatic impact worldwide, leading to widespread unemployment and poverty. In response, authoritarian regimes emerged in several countries in Europe, specifically the Nazi Party in Germany. Weaker states such as China and Poland were invaded by expansionist world powers, leading to the outbreak of the World War II a few months before the end of the decade. Even so, the 1930s also saw a multitude of new inventions, especially in the fields of intercontinental flight, radio, and film.…
John Steinbeck is a world renowned author in America. He has written great novels such as: Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. In both novels, Steinbeck references The Great Depression. Steinbeck uses setting, tone, and characterization to reveal the plight of the Great Depression in these classic novels. First, Steinbeck uses California as the setting of The Grapes of Wrath.…
Through the agency of his characters, Steinbeck depicts the themes of dehumanization, and alienation and loneliness in order to portray the harsh reality of living during the Great Depression. John Steinbeck was a man who told the stories of the lives of the common people (McArthur 9). Steinbeck grew up in a small agricultural community in California (Bloom 7). As a young boy, Steinbeck grew an unmatchable appreciation for…
The Everlasting Impact of Writing "What lasts is what is written. We look to literature to find the essence of age." - Peter Brodie Here, he writes about the power of writing, and it's ability to make history. Of mice and men, a perfect example, of history being able to live on the pages of literature, because the novella takes place in a pivotal time period in the United States. The Great Depression and the dust bowl are at the forefront of all culture which allows clear sight to see the struggles they went through back then.…
The writing of the migrant farmers held a great deal of allure to Steinbeck because their predicament was so opposite of what American identity was comprised. When one thinks of American Identity, the immediate connotations that enter one's mind are the notion of economic success, roots in a home, the development of a happy family, and a general sense of contentment in one's setting and the world in which one is enveloped. However, in writing about the migrant worker in the 1930s, this state of reality is entirely contrasted with the predicament that faced the migrant farmer. Struggling for work, they moved from place to place without a clear sense of home in an almost rootless existence driven to find work and a means of subsistence.…
Steinbeck’s stories were not only popular in the America, they were popular in other countries. The importance of his stories share with the world showed that America the land of opportunity was not easy and glamorous. People have their own struggles and weren’t always successful. Some example of his work showing the everyday struggles of common people in America include: One book Steinbeck wrote was Tortilla Flat.…
The Great Depression occurred during the the 1930’s and up until the beginning of World War 2. In the United States, there was no such thing as money, possessions, or structure. One night you were in the upper class, the next, you were in the same boat as everyone else, broke. But, in the middle of it all stood an oasis; the Salinas River Valley, which is where our author, John Steinbeck and his story, Of Mice and Men, came about. In his novella, Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck uses George, Crooks, and Curley’s Wife to prove that people will go to extreme measures to escape loneliness.…
In the novella of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck paints a depressing, but realistic portrait of America in the 1930s. He reveals what it was truly like to be a woman in that time period. Women back then were treated as nothing more than the property of men, they were possessions, they were objects. They were not their own person and the only identity that they had was that of their husband or their father. The role of a housewife was forced onto women, so much so that the only thing they could aspire to be was a stay at home mother.…
This event had a large impact on people’s ability to keep or get a job, and made it almost impossible to achieve a dream during this time. It is clear that Steinbeck believes the “American Dream” is not attainable based on characters like George, Lennie, Crooks, and Curley’s wife whose dreams in life are all left…
“Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck is set in Northern California during the Great Depression, around 1930’s. The main characters, George and Lennie, illustrate the American struggles throughout the great Depression, financially, socially but mostly discrimination. While focusing on the struggles of these times, the theme of this book consists from an exaggeration of total inequality of power between race, with Crooks being segregated and being treated differently because of his skin color, age, with Candy living in fear of getting kicked out due to his increasing age, and gender, with Curley's wife representing the female presence in an atrocious way, serving as morals to the plot. Clearly stating to us that the purpose of this book consist…
Men of the time had lived lives without hope - Their dreams demolished, their lives without meaning, no hope, no morals, nothing. Yet these lesson expressed by Steinbeck would teach men how to repurpose their lives for a proper intention. Steinbeck’s books, like Of Mice and Men, would be for one, more relatable than the Bible, as a lesson for those in need of a change in their lives. The references itself would already be able to show how Steinbeck would intend to redefine this book. As per the book, these could teach meaning and hope into the lives of them hopeless individuals of the Great Depression.…
During World War II all the books and poems were over war which brought horrible nightmares from it, including the Great Depression. Steinbeck relieved much of pain and sadness with the humor and joyful stories in order to let the people escape modern day tragedies. John Steinbeck is the voice and hope for all the Americans that had to suffer through…
John Steinbeck was and is one of history’s greatest American writers because of his great writing works. Since Steinbeck was a naturalist, many of his works had a main theme of nature, the human attempts to compromise with nature, and human connections. For example, in Of Mice and Men, his book of the two migrant workers and their endeavors portray how hard it was to get a job during the Great Depression and keep it. It also showed how people who had a job, struggled to make a living.…