VCE English
Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck
THE AUTHOR
What do you already know about the author and the time period he lived in?
EARLY YEARS
- Born in 1902
- Salinas, California
- 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.
WORKING LIFE
- In 1919, he enrolled at Stanford University
- Studied for the next six years
- Left without having earned a degree.
- Worked as a reporter and then as caretaker for a Lake Tahoe estate.
LITERARY WORKS
- Best-known works deal intimately with the plight of desperately poor California wanderers, who, despite the cruelty of their circumstances, often triumph spiritually.
- Wrote three novels about the plight of the California laboring class.
- Beginning with In Dubious Battle in 1936.
- Of Mice and Men followed in 1937.
- The Grapes of Wrath won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize and became Steinbeck’s most famous novel.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The History of Migrant Farmers in California
- After World War I
- California
- Economic and ecological forces brought many rural poor and migrant agricultural workers from the Great Plains states, such as Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas, to California.
- Recession then led to a drop in the market price of farm crops
- Farmers were forced to produce more goods in order to earn the same amount of money.
- To meet this demand for increased productivity, many farmers bought more land and invested in expensive agricultural equipment
- This pushed them into debt.
- The stock market crash of 1929 only made matters worse.
- Banks were forced to foreclose on mortgages and collect debts.
- Unable to pay their creditors, many farmers lost their property and were forced to find other work.
- But doing so proved very difficult
- Nation's unemployment rate had skyrocketed
- 20% unemployment rate in 1933.
How has Steinbek incorporated this into his novella Of Mice and Men?
- Steinbeck illustrates how grueling, challenging, and often unrewarding the life of migrant farmers could be.
- Just as George and Lennie dream of a better life on their own farm, the Great Plains farmers dreamed of finding a better life in California.
- The state’s mild climate promised a longer growing season and, with soil favorable to a wider range of crops, it offered more opportunities to harvest.
- Despite these promises, though, very few found it to be the land of opportunity and plenty of which they dreamed.