John Steinbeck: Experiencing the Dust Bowl Essay

One of his most famous books was “Grapes of Wrath”, which sold over fourteen million copies. The number of copies the book sold suggests that its a good book. The continued famed of the book still influences other writers today and still has many fans.

Both John Steinbeck’s criticism and optimism was written into The Grapes of Wrath, a book that he researched for nearly two years before he finally finished the book. While writing the novel, he said to his friend and literary agent: “I must go over into the interior valleys. There are about five thousand families starving to death over there...The states and counties will give them nothing because they are outsiders. But the crops of any part of this state could not be harvested without these outsiders. I 'm pretty mad about it... Funny how mean and little books become in the face of such tragedies. (Steinbeck)” His opinionated viewpoint on the treatment of the migrant workers is what drove him to write The Grapes of Wrath the way he did. Though Steinbeck’s goal with his stylistic choices was to write a story with allusions that many people would be able to understand in order to deepen the meaning of his novel, he also used The Grapes of Wrath to share his own religious and societal beliefs with his audience.

Shortly after being released John Steinbeck’s book “The Grapes of Wrath” was banned because many critics viewed the novel as promoting communist propaganda, or socialist ideas. The ideas that many of these critics point to is Steinbeck’s depiction of the Big Banks/ Businesses as monsters, the comparison of Government camps to a utopia in contrast of the makeshift “Hoovervilles,” and the theme of the community before the individual, In his novel “The Grapes of Wrath” John Steinbeck uses the struggle of migrants on their way to California to show how certain socialist ideas and theories could make the Capitalist society better.

While residing in California, Steinbeck was concerned with migrant labor camps, and even traveled with migrants in Hooverville’s to observe conditions of camps. Steinbeck devoted himself to writing his famous works such as; Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, Tortilla Flat, and Cannery Row. Some of Steinbeck’s pieces like Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath were such hits they were made into movies. Before Steinbeck’s death on December 20th, 1968 he was awarded Nobel Prize for literature in 1962, National book award, and Pulitzer Prize for his lifetime accomplishments.

Following a harsh drought and set during the Great Depression, The Grapes of Wrath is a 1939 novel about migrant farmers who lost their livelihoods and went to California in search of jobs. John Steinbeck, who wrote it, grew up in Salinas Valley and met many migrant laborers while working as a rancher. After reading The Grapes of Wrath, he wanted readers to learn about the sickening injustice that thousands of migrants of faced during the 1930s. This is shown by the used car salesmen’s exploitation of migrants, the starving people who were violently denied access to food that was about to be disposed, and the unjust death of Jim Casy.

Most of Steinbeck’s stories took place in the Salinas Valley and Monterey. When the stories took place in the Salinas Valley his characters were

When Steinbeck was in the process of writing a novel about the migrant farm workers, he didn’t take the task very lightly and stayed committed. His novel is a chronicle of the Depression and a commentary on the social and economic system that influenced the rise. During the early 1930’s throughout

The plot of the novel The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck was perfectly stated by Alan Yuhas, in the article “The Grapes of Wrath is 75 years old and more relevant than ever” he stated. “...devastating weather and a bank's debt system force the Joad family off their farm; they go west, for work and good weather in California. They discover thousands of other migrants living in desperate poverty, exploited by the rich, abused by

Famed novelist John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas ,California. His books, included his landmark work The Grapes of Wrath, often dealt with social and economic issues. Steinbeck was raised with modest means. His father, John Ernst, tried his hand at several different jobs to keep his family fed: He own a feed-and-grain store, managed a flour plant and served as treasurer of Monterrey County. His mother, Olive Hamilton Steinbeck, was a former school teacher.

John Steinbeck is one of the most popular and important authors in American literature. Witnessing some of the darkest moments of the human experience, twentieth-century writers, like Steinbeck, found themselves swept up in the wars, politics, and social movements of the century. Considering the subjects that drew Steinbeck’s notice, and the care in which he wrote about different people groups, one thing seems to be clear: Steinbeck cared about people. With a large majority of his works concentrating on the state of California, Steinbeck found the land, and its people, worth writing about. Published three years apart, the two novels In Dubious Battle (1936) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939) differ greatly, from Steinbeck’s treatment of political themes to his treatment of the narrative’s focus. After the success of his novel In Dubious Battle, Steinbeck would go on to be hired to write seven articles for The San Francisco News, where he experienced the abundance of abuses that would provoke Steinbeck to take a different direction with his next novel, The Grapes of Wrath. Drawing notice to the significant deviations between the two novels, In Dubious Battle and The Grapes of Wrath, through his treatment of subject matter, character development, and concluding assessments, this period of Steinbeck’s life would go on to identify Steinbeck as an authentic voice for the concealed victims of California’s agricultural valleys.

During the 1920s and 1930s, USA was suffering from a terrible economic downturn-the Great Depression. It was also a boom period of literature creation and many well-known writers emerged in that special historical time. Because of the difficult situations, American writers turned their focus to social problems and issues. They were motivated to arouse sympathy for the suffering of common people, especially those at the very bottom of the society. (Wang, 2012) John Steinbeck (1902-1968), born in Salinas, California, is one of the most significant and representative American writers in that era. He is the winner of the Noble Prize for Literature in 1962.

Accomplished novelist, John Steinbeck, born in 1902, serves as a staple of American literature. He grew up in Salinas, California and graduated from Salinas High School in 1919. After attending Stanford University to study English Literature and failing to obtain a degree, Steinbeck moved to New York City and jumped between odd jobs and writing. With no luck in becoming published, he moved back to California, where he spent the rest of his life. As the author of novels, both fiction and nonfiction, along with collections of short stories, Steinbeck can definitely be recognized as a true classic author. His most noteworthy novel, The Grapes of Wrath, rightfully claims both the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. Another famous novel, Of Mice and Men, reveals Steinbeck’s serious tone of writing as well as a tragic story line in his work. As the winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, his novels are still read and appreciated all around the world today. Living and writing during the Great Depression, Steinbeck realized that oftentimes, people need to rely on others in times of need. This, however, can create relationships between people in which there is an unequal balance of power. He utilizes his experiences from the Great Depression to demonstrate these differing amounts of dominance. Power and the absence of power shape the relationships and steer the course of events in Of Mice and Men.

(Steinbeck 367) and is inherently pleased and relieved when the answer is “yes.” Instead of sugarcoating the horrible conditions of these workers, Steinbeck deliberately goes into details in the shortages of food, water, clothing, etc. in the camps. Steinbeck had always been a “compassionate man, someone… concerned with the ‘little guy’” (Railsback and Meyer 349).This is certainly seen in his writing, especially in The Grapes of Wrath.

John Steinbeck was born to a German father and Irish mother in the fertile valley of Salinas, California on February 27, 1902. The valley would become a great influence to his work as he would write predominantly about “America’s rural and immigrant working classes, especially those living through the Great Depression.” Through books like The Grapes Of Wrath (1939), Steinbeck is able to capture the essence of the period, “especially the plight of the socially and economically dispossessed”. The followup East Of Eden (1952) followed a similar style, but "poured much of his own personal experience” into the novel. Steinbeck died in New York on December 20, 1968 with a largely respected body of works in which most are in print to this day.

John Steinbeck was born in 1902 and lived during what is said to be the most troubled time in American history. Steinbeck was alive during the Dust Bowl paired with the Great Depression, which is believed to be the reason for his almost melancholiac tone in some of his works but he seemed a very diverse writer. Along with “The Chrysanthemums”, Steinbeck is the author of the well-known and famous novel turned movie The Grapes of Wrath, where he used a “documentary style”, says Cliff Lewis in his online article he named after Steinbeck. Moreover in his article, Lewis expresses some of the lingering secrets and