John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck was born in February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California. Salinas was

an agricultural valley in California. His father was the county treasurer and

his mother was a schoolteacher. This is where his education began from a mother

that encouraged him to read. The community was a comfortable environment for him

to live in because of the encouragement of independence and initiative. His

parents didn't want him to be a writer. They wanted him to have a true

profession as a lawyer. His early interest in reading led him through school,

with his main interest in science. At age 15 he decided to become a writer,

influenced by an English teacher, and faintly remembered by schoolmates for

spending so much time in his room writing. After graduating from high school, he

went to Stanford University in 1920. While he was there for five he contributed

to the school paper by writing poems and comics. He took courses in science and

writing, but never received a degree. In 1925, when he left Stanford, he became

a marine biologist. He moved to New York in 1925 to work as a reporter for a

newspaper. Always being a non-conformist, he was fired from the newspaper for

writing opinions instead of facts. This started the many jobs he would be a part

of in his lifetime. Some of these jobs include an apprentice hod carrier, an

apprentice printer, a working chemist, caretaker of Lake Tahoe Estate, surveyor

in Big Sur County, and a fruit picker. He also worked other more physically

labored jobs, such as a rancher, road worker, deck hand, cotton picker, and

bricklayer. While involved in these jobs, he made many close friends that he

came to admire because of their "cant and hypocrisy" which he applauded and

whom all of these people soon were characters in his novels. Many of these

experiences were the "helpers" to his many novels. His fruit picking and

Great Depression led him to write The Grapes of Wrath, his best known and most

ambitious of his works. Also, he wrote Of Mice and Men, which was formed from

his job as a hired hand on the many farms he worked. Many things affected his

writing of the time period of which he wrote. Things like the Great Depression,

World War 2, and the Vietnam War are the major influences. World War 2 was when

he was working for the federal government as a writer, so his works focused on

greed and materialism in the beings of modern civilization, Cannery Row and The

Wayward Bus are two good examples of this idea. After World War 2, he wrote

mainly of several outcasts. The Grapes of Wrath was an influential piece from

the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl that existed in California. It is about

the migration of farm families, leaving their old towns to become "ghost

towns." A bit of inventions came into effect during this time period.

Technology was changing the way that Americans lived and worked. The player

piano was invented in 1905. Henry Ford Model T in 1908. Everyone has heard of

the