Essays on John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck’s “The Chrysanthemums” dives into the world of wife Elisa Allen. As a 35 year old woman she is childless and extremely dissatisfied in her passionless marriage to her well-meaning but utterly clueless husband, Henry. Her low level of self-confidence also contributes to this...

John Steinbeck, the author of “Of Mice And Men”, is trying to say that the loneliness leads to depression and it is a major theme in the novel. Most of the characters are very lonely because they have no family. However, George and Lennie are...

Though operating in vastly different mediums, novelist John Steinbeck and filmmaker Preston Sturges were among the first American artists to explore philosophical solutions to the economic travesty that gripped the national psyche from 1929 to 1941. Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and Sturges’ “Sullivan’s...

Historians have noted that works of literature often adopt the mood of the times in which they were written. It is thus not surprising that The Grapes of Wrath, written by John Steinbeck in the desperate nadir of the Great Depression, appears to be a...

Nourishment as a Symbol in The Grapes Of Wrath In The Grapes of Wrath, families traveling to California suffer starvation and exhaustion because of malnourishment. The Dust Bowl is a physical embodiment of their starvation. Possibly more important than the physical nourishment is the mental...

Steinbeck’s novel “The Grapes of Wrath” has been the subject of much critical attention. Many of the novel’s detractors have concentrated their critiques not upon its literary failings, but rather its politics (Zirakzadeh). At the time of the novel’s publication and in the years since,...

Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California. He was of German, English, and Irish descent. Johann Adolf Großsteinbeck (1828–1913), Steinbeck’s paternal grandfather, shortened the family name to Steinbeck when he immigrated to the United States. The family farm in Heiligenhaus, Mettmann, North...

John Steinbeck shows how important a friendship is and how much two people can support each other to survive. Take this bond away and it will create a difficult and almost impossible journey for the two men in this novel. John Steinbeck portrays Lennie and...

Authors often use religious allusions to further the significance of a novel. It is when the reader recognizes and understands these influences that the importance of the novel can be truly understood. In John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck utilizes numerous Christian references to...

Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath, two novels published concurrently by John Steinbeck, both depict camaraderie between dust bowl migrants. The main characters in Of Mice and Men, George and Lennie, form a bond, while struggling to reach their goal, a small...

It was an alluring weather of calm and quiet on a dark starry night. The fathomless pool of the Salinas river laid still in the blissful night. The sun was long gone by now, what was the top of mountains that was as red as...

Chapter Twenty-Five is central to John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Besides containing the title of the book, this chapter clearly, forcefully, and elegantly drives home Steinbeck’s central message the injustice of life in the Depression-era American west. Without doubt one of Steinbeck’s strongest attributes...

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck introduces a family rooted in the leadership of men. The journey of hardship they endure, however, disintegrates this patriarchal control, leaving the women, Ma specifically, to take charge. As Pa falls behind, guilt-ridden for his lack of ability...

The vignettes and anecdotes interspersed throughout John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row may, at first sight, seem tangential. Yet they are fundamental to the novel, not least because the plot line–throwing a party for Doc–would be insufficient to sustain a short story, let alone a full-length novel....

In the novel ‘ Of mice and men’ John Steinbeck uses the character Crooks to represent racism across America and symbolise the marginalisation of the black community at the time the novel is set. From the beginning Steinbeck skillfully uses Crooks as a tool to...

Depicting a world where the struggle to survive is elemental, two incisive narratives emerged to describe what life was like during the Dust Bowl. Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time comprises a non-fiction description of life following actual figures and stories of people who had...

In John Steinbeck’s “The Chrysanthemums,” nature represents Elisa Allen’s confinement, the chrysanthemums symbolize Elisa herself, and the tinker embodies Elisa’s wants. The narrator compares the Salinas Valley to “a closed pot” because “[a] high gray-flannel fog of winter closed off the [valley] from the sky...

The novel takes place in the 1930s in a ranch beside Salinas River in Soledad in California. Two friends: George, a farm worker, and Lennie a tall simple-minded man. They are always searching about new job because Lennie gets them in trouble. He took by...

This story is about kino finding a pearl and the effects of this. Kino and juana are the main characters of the story and want to change their poor life circumstances to a wealthier lifestyle when they found the pearl. They encounter many conflicts throughout...