Of Mice and Men

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Of Mice and Men

• by John Steinbeck

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Steinbeck

• Born in Sallinas, California in 1902
• Mother - a school teacher who read to John as a
  child
• Went to Stanford University - 5 years - never
  received a degree

• As young man worked as a ranch hand fruit
  picker.
• Went to New York to pursue writing career failed
• Returned to Calif. continued to write

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The Early Years

• Born on Feb. 27, 1902
• Born in Salinas, California
• Middle-class family
• Began writing at the age of 14

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• Cannery Row(1944)
• The Wayward Bus(1947)
• The Pearl (1948)
• East of Eden (1952)
• The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)
• Travels with Charlie (1962)

• First published in 1929
• 2 more 1932 33
• Tortilla Flat (1935)
• In Dubious Battle (1935)
• Of Mice Men (1937)
• The Grapes of Wrath (1939) Won Pulitzer in 1940
• The Moon is Down (1942)

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Steinbeck

• Received Nobel Prize for literature in 1962 for
  total body of work.
• His novels take their realism from his practice
  of living and working with people about who he
  wrote.
• He worked as a migrant worker
• He died in 1968

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Famous Novels

• Cup Of Gold

Tortilla Flat
Of Mice and Men
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Unemployment Lines, 1930s. The Wall Street
stock-market crash of 1929 precipitated the Great
Depression, the worst economic downturn in the
history of the United States. The depression
lasted over a decade, with hundreds of thousands
of Americans losing their jobs, businesses
failing, and financial institutions collapsing.
Of the 6000 people hoping to get jobs on this day
in New York, 135 were hired. UPI/BETTMANN
The Great Depression
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Leaving the Dust Bowl During the 1930s, the
southern Great Plains region of the United States
known as the Dust Bowl suffered severe wind
erosion brought on by several years of drought
and over tillage. President Franklin Roosevelts
New Deal policy helped alleviate the financial
losses, and new methods of land conservation were
implemented. Culver Pictures, Inc.
The Great Dustbowl and Oklahoma
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• The southern part of the Great Plains region
  suffered from wind erosion - included
• Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado
• 96,000,000 acres ----GONE!
• caused by character of soil, climate, types of
  agriculture practice

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• Before WWI - homesteaders settled , planting
  wheat row
• crops
• By 1935. 1/2 of Dust Bowl crops and other 1/2
  cattle
• Both left soil open to erosion
• Early 30s - severe droughts - soil began to blow
  away -
• sometimes 3 to 4 inches of top soil

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• 40-80 of land suffered erosion - some mild
• crop failure loss of good soil ruined farmers
• 1000s of families moved West
• Many thousands of people and no jobs
• The car became the family home
• A subculture developed of men called Hobos- they
  traveled
• The rail systems of the United States finding
  work and food.

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Of Mice and Men

• Facts
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Pulitzer Prize

• Facts
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Resources

• http//www.bellmore-merrick.k12.ny.us/mice.html
• http//www.newi.ac.uk/englishresources/workunits/k
  s4/fiction/ofmicemen/llshort/factsheet.html
• http//www.clevelandplayhouse.com/StudyGuides/MS07
  04-sg.pdf

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A dust storm blows in
Buried homes and farm equipment
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Little girl with a cotton picking sack
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A Typical Migrant Camp
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Boxcar Home
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Sharecroppers entering California
Okies encamped on a river bottom
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Migrant Families