A Dreams Depression John Steinbeck is a famous American author, best known for his book Of Mice and Men. On February 27th, 1902, John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was born in Salinas, California. As a teenager, fourteen years old, he decided to start writing stories and poems. Steinbeck enrolled into Stanford University in 1919. In 1925 he dropped out because he had no passion for school. Cup of Gold, was Steinbeck’s first official novel to be published. On October 1929, only two months after the publication, the U.S. stock market crashed, igniting the Great Depression. Steinbeck met his first wife, Carol Henning, around the same time he wrote his first novel. They then moved into a small cottage in Pacific Grove, California, where he completed much …show more content…
Salinas, California is where Steinbeck spent most of his adult life during the Great Depression. The majority of the story Of Mice and Men takes place on a ranch in Soledad, California along the Salinas River. Growing up, Steinbeck also participated in working on ranches and farm lands. During the Great Depression more than a quarter of the population was unemployed which led to desperate times. Steinbeck was one of the many unemployed desperately searching for way to support his family. From 1930 to 1936, severe drought took over the Great Plains of the Midwest, which was most of the farmland. The drought killed mostly all of the crops, and with no plants to hold down the soil, the dry dirt swirled up into suffocating dust storms. With no money coming in, because of the loss of crops, many people lost their homes and farms. Those who lost everything were forced to migrate in search of work for food and shelter. George and Lennie had nothing but themselves which forced them to migrate to the ranch in Soledad. Men who had once been their own bosses were now forced to work for wages on other people's farms, often in harmful conditions. In Of Mice and Men, we several examples of these things happening. In the novel, George and Lennie are travelers by train in search of work. Many of the worker in the story were