...Why do betw and 3 million people leave their homes to go, and work for a farm with long hours? The novel of mice and men by John Steinbeck shows the lives of many different migrant workers and explores, the motives of the choice of employment. Through the characters the author shows how difficult it is to be a migrant worker with a dream but, it’s that dream that’s keeping them going. Curly is the farm owners son and his dream is to own the land. However his dad is not impressed by what he is doing on the farm to give it to him. Curly already thinks he is the owner the land and does not do any of the work because he thinks he is better than everybody else. He is not happy but the only thing that keeps him doing what he doing is the idea...
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...The novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck is about migrant workers in the 1930s and the hard decisions they have to make along the way in order to achieve their goals. In the third chapter of the novel, George and Lennie talk to Candy about their dream of owning a farm, Candy offers all of his savings to help them out while in return asking for them to welcome him into their dream as well. At the same time Curley has lost his wife and is very suspicious of Slim, they get into an argument and Curley takes all of his anger out on Lennie and they get into a big fight. Another issue that was occuring was Carlson wanted Candy to shoot his dog because he was smelly, old, and has no use left to Candy anymore. Carlson made the heartless decision...
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...H. Tharp The Unspoken Truth about John Steinbeck’s Legacy in Monterey County John Ernst Jr. Steinbeck is one of the most respected and honored American writers among our society today. In many classrooms around the world, his books are still mandated as reading requirements and there are many museums and centers dedicated to this esteemed author. John Steinbeck has won numerous awards for his books, most notably the Pulitzer Prize for his fictional novel, The Grapes of Wrath in 1940, and the Nobel Prize in literature in 1962 based on his entire body of work. Steinbeck’s other awards, which are typically less known are included in the following chart: WORK | YEAR | AWARD | MEDIUM | “The Murder” | 1934 | O. Henry Award | Print | Tortilla Flat | 1935 | Commonwealth Club of California Gold Medal for Best Novel by a Californian | Print | In Dubious Battle | 1936 | Ibid | Print | Of Mice and Men | 1938 | N.Y Drama Critic’s Circle Award | Play | “The Promise” | 1938 | O. Henry Award | Print | Of Mice and Men | 1939 | American Bookseller’s Award | Print | LifeBoat | 1944 | Academy Award nominee for Best Story | Print | A Medal for Benny | 1945 | Ibid | Print | The Moon is Down | 1946 | King Haakon Liberty Cross | Print | Viva Zapata! | 1952 | Academy Award nominee for Best Original Screenplay | Play | N/A | 1963 | Honorary Consultant in American Literature to the Library of Congress | N/A | N/A | 1964 | U.S Medal of Freedom; Press Medal of Freedom | N/A...
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...John Steinbeck Research Paper: Final Draft John Steinbeck is regarded as the “quintessential American writer.” He created many works of literature that “evoke life in the 20th century with compassion and lyrical precision” (Li). John Steinbeck’s most popular works such as Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939) explore the darker side of life in America for farm laborers. Though these works were considered highly controversial, they gained him major recognition. Of Mice and Men was adapted as a play in 1938 and was declared the best play by New York Drama Critics’ Circle. He went on to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1940 for The Grapes of Wrath. In 1962, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature (Schultz & Li). As a child and youth, Steinbeck spent a lot of time working on farms and interacting with other migrant workers. His experiences with migrant farm workers created the foundation for Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. John Ernst Steinbeck was born on February 27th 1902 in Salinas California to John Ernst Steinbeck Sr. and Olivia Hamilton Steinbeck. Steinbeck Sr. managed a flour mill, and his mother Olivia was a teacher in a school, thus securing the family a middle class income (Bender). His mother Olivia looked to “mold him into a man of broad intellectual capacity” (Kiernan). She read him several books as a child and, by the age of five, he could read. In school he was teased for “his large ears…so he withdrew into books.” His...
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...John Steinbeck was born in 1902 in Salinas, California, a region that became the setting for much of his fiction, including Of Mice and Men. As a teenager, he spent his summers working as a hired hand on neighboring ranches, where his experiences of rural California and its people impressed him deeply. In 1919, he enrolled at Stanford University, where he studied intermittently for the next six years before finally leaving without having earned a degree. For the next five years, he worked as a reporter and then as caretaker for a Lake Tahoe estate while he completed his first novel, an adventure story called Cup of Gold, which was published in 1929. Critical and commercial success did not come for another six years, when Tortilla Flat was published in 1935, at which point Steinbeck was finally able to support himself entirely with his writing. In his acceptance speech for the 1962 Nobel Prize in literature, Steinbeck said: . . . the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man’s proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature. Steinbeck’s best-known works deal intimately with the plight of desperately poor California wanderers, who, despite the cruelty of their circumstances...
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...06 November 2012 John Steinbeck: A Champion for the Common Man Born with the hand of a writer, John Steinbeck’s career sparked great political controversy, and greatly influenced the writings of his time. Widely considered one of America’s greatest novelists, his books are still frequently studied in school. Among his many accomplishments is the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Nobel Prize in Literature. With notable works such as The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, he expressed his dissatisfaction with capitalism and his sympathy for the struggle of the common worker in a way that captured the world’s attention – which resulted in some of his work even being banned. In the novel Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck explores the pervasive theme of loneliness and illustrates the fallacy of the American Dream. Widely considered his masterpiece, however, is The Grapes of Wrath which depicts the struggle of a family of Oklahoman farmers who are forced into a migratory existence due to the drought and dust storms following the Great Depression. When considering both The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, it is clear Steinbeck drew from his own personal experiences as a laborer when writing each of these novels. On February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California, John and Olive Steinbeck welcomed their third child and only son, John Ernst Steinbeck. John Ernst Steinbeck, Sr. was a county treasurer and Olive Hamilton Steinbeck was a schoolteacher. By all accounts, Steinbeck enjoyed...
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...Of Mice and Men is one of the most widely assigned modern novels in high schools because of both its form and the issues that it raises. John Steinbeck’s reliance on dialogue, as opposed to contextual description, makes the work accessible to young readers, as does his use of foreshadowing and recurrent images. Equally important is the way in which he intertwines the themes of loneliness and friendship and gives dignity to those characters, especially Lennie and Crooks, who are clearly different from their peers. By focusing on a group of lonely drifters, Steinbeck highlights the perceived isolation and sense of “otherness” that can seem so overwhelming when one is growing up. Of Mice and Men is also important because it explores the way in which events can conspire against the realization of one’s dreams. It pits a group of flawed individuals against a set of circumstances that they are unable to master or, in the case of Lennie, even to comprehend. This is a theme that Steinbeck also explores in his classic novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939). When Steinbeck began Of Mice and Men, he was planning to write a children’s book called Something That Happened. His intent was to demonstrate that events often have a momentum of their own and need not reflect the existence of a higher power that is exacting punishment. Perhaps it was for this reason that he decided to retitle the book, drawing from Robert Burns’s oft-quoted poem “To a Mouse,” which contains the line “The best-laid...
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...In the novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, loneliness is a powerful motif. This motif is constantly repeated throughout the story and helps the reader receive Steinbeck's view on isolation. John Steinbeck is saying that loneliness was normal during the Great Depression. As depicted in his novel, it was out of the norm to find two migrant workers travelling together, for everyone was scared of each other and many suffered as a result of being alone for too long. During the Great Depression, it was rare to see two migrant workers travelling together. When the two main characters, George and Lennie, were talking, they were saying that "Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family.... With us it ain't like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us" (Steinbeck 15). George and Lennie were saying that most migrant workers travelled alone and rarely had a companion. Unlike most, George and Lennie had each other...
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...John Steinbeck’s 1937 novel Of Mice and Men is a tale of two migrant workers in the Great Depression, who despite being complete contrasts of one and other, work together to survive the difficult lifestyle. George, the vastly more intelligent of the two, is a warden to Lennie, the colossal working machine who suffers from a mental condition. Steinbeck demonstrates the crippling loneliness the people of the ranch suffer from through his impeccable style. Steinbeck reveals via meticulous dialogue that discrimination is a leading cause of loneliness among the people of the ranch. For example, In Chapter 5, Curly’s wife goes to the barn to talk with Lennie while the other ranch hands play horseshoes, she proclaims, “Why can’t I talk to you? I never get to talk to nobody. I get awful lonely. (Steinbeck 86)”...
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...the Working Class: John Steinbeck and His Mark on Literature Writing has left influence on millions. Books have transformed lives, given purpose and happiness to those who have read them: literature is one of the most important things to a society, as it not only allows its readers to grow intellectually, but also creatively. John Steinbeck was once just a nine year old with Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory, who then went on to be someone considered one of the best writers of his time. Steinbeck has been held up next to authors like Edgar Allen Poe, and his writing is taught in most, if not every, high schools in America. Very few people are born famous and even less are born skilled in their field. Steinbeck was born in Salinas,...
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...Even with careful planning and precision, fate will be a leading factor of one’s outcome despite hard work and effort in John Steinbeck’s, Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck’s use of extended metaphors displays fate as unpredictable and unavoidable despite careful planning and work. “Heron stood...motionless, and waiting” (Steinbeck 99), revealing fate as patient and unpredictable, but is also inescapable, never truly escaping from the “legs of the motionless heron” (Steinbeck 99). Steinbeck’s use of extended metaphors writes down the relationship between Lennie and the water snake and fate and the Heron. The heron symbolizes fate as powerful and inevitable, only having one path in which it takes. The bird simply attacks with no hesitation, just...
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...As some of the paramount examples of early 20th century literature, John Steinbeck's novels not only encompass the epitomes in characteristics of the laboring class, but also demonstrate the resilience of the human spirit. Through stories of the downtrodden, Steinbeck teaches the reader a much-needed lesson about the complexity of the world in which we live and the people's response to that complexity. Of Mice and Men's protagonist, George, convincingly personifies the dispiriting mood that spanned America at the time of the Great Depression. Attempting to find work in California, George is depicted as a capable, yet underprivileged, laborer who begins to form conceptions on the dynamics of society. Through George's journey, Steinbeck paints a picture of a typical American worker in the Depression-ridden country, and in turn shows the reader the unfortunate realization that the main character comes to as he searches for a job: the world is designed for the weak to become weaker and strong to become stronger. In other words, the concept of social Darwinism prevails in this novel as, time and time again, the main characters are forced into an endless cycle of poverty (want to say something along these lines but a different word than poverty). "Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place. They come to a ranch an' work up a stake and then go inta town and blow their stake, and the first thing...
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...The novel ‘Of Mice and Men’ based in the 1930s during The Great Depression revolves around the thought of ‘The American Dream’. Life during the Great Depression was very harsh and difficult for the American workers as they had to travel long distances to find suitable jobs. The author John Steinbeck describes the lives of two migrant workers travelling together in search for work. The American dream was the belief in freedom that allows American citizens to pursue their goals in life through hard work and bravery, this was seen to be the main factor that motivated most of the migrant workers to continue to find jobs and later on fulfil their own dream and live a happier life. In the book ‘Of Mice and Men’ Steinbeck has made the ranch a micro representation of the society of the time because it contains all the elements of society. George and Lennie’s only hope was to move around the country to achieve their dream due to The Great Depression, the dream was a typical American dream where there is a large piece of land with a small house and many different farm animals, throughout their travel George would usually use the their dream to control Lennie’s actions and behaviour. ‘Say’s I can’t tend no rabbits if I talk to you or anything.’ Steinbeck is trying to represent how society controls the people in it by showing that George has greater control over Lennie. George threatens to take away Lennie’s ability to get his dream, if he gets into trouble. However, if Lennie works hard...
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...The Different Kinds of Isolation shown in "Of Mice & Men" The weakness most people have, that some people fear, Loneliness. Something that can bring down even the strongest of people in our society. John Steinbeck’s novella, Of Mice & Men, claims loneliness can change the way a person acts, sees the world and themselves. Many people and characters suffer in the lonely atmosphere around them. For example, Curley's wife isn't supposed to talk to anyone else on the farm. " You can talk to people, but I [...]" page 87. This would mean she is stuck alone in the house, with no one to talk to. Being closed away from others is terrible as you are to be by yourself. Losing your best friend to end up having no one would be one of the worst times. "I...
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...A major motif of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is the American dream and the drive to attain it. The life of a ranch hand is grim, yet the characters in the novel are still vulnerable to dreams of a better life. The dream of owning land, called the American dream by some, is what motivates George and Lennie in their work on the ranch. It is their friendship that sustains this dream and makes it possible. While the dreams are credible to the reader, in the end all dreams are crushed, and the characters are defeated by their circumstances. The characters in Of Mice and Men have very little to look forward to as migrant ranch hands. They travel from ranch to ranch with all of their possessions in a bundle, looking for work for fifty dollars a month, and that work does not usually last very long. If a man is a good worker, he might be kept on at the ranch indefinitely and wind up as Candy does, old and crippled, just waiting until he is no longer useful. George explains the despair of a ranch hand to Lennie: Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place. They come to a ranch an' work up a stake and then they go inta town and blow their stake, and the first thing you know they're poundin' their tail on some other ranch. They ain't got nothing to look ahead to. (Steinbeck 13-14) Despite their destitute state, many of the characters in Of Mice and Men are prone to dream. George...
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