Of Mice and Men

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Of Mice and Men
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Biography

• He was born in Salinas, California in 1902.
• He lived and worked in California.
• He worked on a dredging crew or in a sugar plant
  to get money for college although he never
  completed a degree.
• He met hoboes, fruit-pickers and migrant workers
  through his work.
• I think I would like to write the story of this
  whole valley, of all the little towns and all the
  farms and the ranches in the wilder hills. I can
  see how I would like to do it so that it would be
  the valley of the world. Steinbecks letter to
  George Albee, Salinas, 1933
• He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962
• His best known novels include The Grapes of
  Wrath, The Pearl, East of Eden, Tortilla Flat and
  The Red Pony
• He died in 1968

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Steinbecks America
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The ancient commission of the writer has not
changed. He is charged with exposing our many
grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to
the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the
purpose of improvement.
Man himself has become our greatest hazard and
our only hope. So that today, Saint John the
Apostle may well be paraphrased In the end is
the word, and the word is man, and the word is
with man.    
From John Steinbecks Nobel Prize acceptance
speech 1962
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The Roaring Twenties

movie
Gin
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Jazz
Flappers
5 a day
Coolidge Americas business is business
Movies
Transatlantic flight
Model T
Hooch
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BUT
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Great Depression

• Most severe economic downturn in American
  history
• Began with the Stock Market crash of 29 October
  1929
• Lasted until the start of American involvement in
  World War II
• Unemployment rose to 30
• 50 of commercial banks failed
• Crop prices fell by 50
• Over-production led to unemployment
• Hunger, despair, poverty, homelessness millions
  of Americans had their lives destroyed

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New Deal

• The New Deal was Franklin Roosevelts response to
  the Great Depression
• One of the movements was the establishment of a
  modern Welfare State while preserving the
  capitalist system
• Women, blacks and other minorities gained little
  from the New Deal
• The effects of the Depression were exacerbated
  (made worse) by the ecological disaster of the
  Dust Bowl which caused many to migrate to
  California in search of the American Dream the
  promised land and wealth

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The American Dream
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The Reality
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The Book
Of Mice and Men was originally called Something
That Happened. When Steinbeck first thought of
the idea for the book he intended it to be for
children. Steinbeck told a friend that he was
experimenting with a new 'dramatic form'. In May
1936 he had a written manuscript - but his puppy
(a setter called Toby) ate it! He said of the
book "It is an experiment and I don't know how
successful." .
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