John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck was one of the leading American novelists of this century and was especially noted for his portrayals of the people and events in California labor history in this century. In many of his best works, California serves almost as another character.

Steinbeck grew up in California. His grandparents on both sides had settled in the region in the mid-1800s. The family settled in the area of Salinas, and at the turn of the century this area was a typical American small town, with a population of some 3,000. Steinbeck would reflect the experience of his grandparents in his novels To a God Unknown and East of Eden, and he would use Salinas as the setting of East of Eden. John was born in 1902. Both his parents considered cultural influences to be important for their children, and they would travel to train several times a year to San Francisco to see plays and attend concerts. John was also exposed to literature at an early age:

As the parents were well educated and loved books, it was the custom after dinner for everyone to gather in the sitting room and listen to the father and mother take turns reading the popular Alice books, adventure stories by Robert Louis Stevenson, or tales from Greek and Roman mythology (McCarthy 5).

The boy's family life was not perfect, thought, and there were family disagreements and arguments form time to time. John did not live a bookish or sheltered life and was usually the leader among the points in his part of town, which wo

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ry to master their own fate and determine their own future to as great a degree as anyone can. In the case of the Joad family, the family disintegrates under the pressures of this migration, and Ma Joad emerges as the central cohesive force for the family that remains. Steinbeck has a particular interest in the community element in the story of the Joads and in the cohesive nature of the struggle. This cohesion once served American society well in bringing together a variety of people in the immigration and pioneer experience. It served as the power that built the nation, that shaped its institutions, and that held out the promise of its future. However, in the Depression, this power has been dissipated and distorted, and the people feel powerless and lost. Only the religion of a man like Casy or the family dedication of a woman like Ma Joad offer a means for holding the community together under these circumstances. The Salinas Valley in Northern California is the site where Adam Trask wants to create his own version of Eden--his name signifies that he will be the first man of the family in this valley, to be followed by his sons Caleb and Aron, the C and the A representing Cain and Abel. It would be wrong to seek absolute

Category: People - J