John Steinbeck Life and Works

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John SteinbeckLife and Works

• February 27, 1902 December 20, 1968

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John Steinbeck

• One of the best known and most widely read
  American writers of the 20th century.
• Steinbeck wrote in the naturalist style,
  portraying people as the center of his stories.

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John Steinbeck

• His people and his stories were taken from real
  life struggles in the first half of the 20th
  century.
• His body of work reflects his wide range of
  interests, including marine biology, jazz,
  politics, philosophy, history, and myth.

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Born and Raised

• February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California
• He used this setting for many of his stories.
• Son of John Ernst Steinbeck III and Olive
  Steinbeck.
• One of four children (3 sisters)

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Education

• Enrolled at Stanford University in 1919.
• Attended off and on until 1925.
• Never received a degree

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Family

• Married Carol Henning in 1930
• Gwyndolyn Conger who gave him 2 children Thomas
  Myles Steinbeck was born in 1944 and his second
  son, John Steinbeck IV was born in 1946.
• Married Elaine Scott in 1950

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Early Works

• Steinbeck's first novel, published in 1929, was
  the unsuccessful mythological work Cup of Gold.
• Steinbeck achieved his first critical success
  with the novel Tortilla Flat (1935), which won
  the California Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal.

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California Novels and Dust-Bowl Fiction

• Set among common people in the Great Depression.
• Of Mice and Men is his novella about the dreams
  of a pair of migrant laborers working the
  California soil. It was published in 1937.

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Writing Style

• Steinbeck often wrote about the need for humans
  to be in partnership with nature.
• His characters are the outcasts of society, poor,
  uneducated and often rebellious.
• Themes economic hardships, dreams and hope
  lost, the dangers of isolation, rootless
  (unwanted) Americans, mans need to belong.

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The Grapes of Wrath

• Steinbeck followed this wave of success with The
  Grapes of Wrath (1939), based on newspaper
  articles he had written in San Francisco, and
  considered by many to be his finest work.

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The Grapes of Wrath

• The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in
  1940.
• It was made into a famous film version starring
  Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford.

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Of Mice and Men

• Setting mid-state California, rural area,
  during the Great Depression
• Characters Two migrant workers George, a
  smart, small man Lennie, a huge, slow man
• Title a literary allusion referring to the poem
  To A Mouse by Robert Burns.

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Film Versions

• The film versions of The Grapes of Wrath and Of
  Mice and Men (by two different movie studios)
  were in production simultaneously, and Steinbeck
  spent a full day on the set of The Grapes of
  Wrath, then the next day on the set of Of Mice
  and Men.

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Controversy

• Steinbeck's liberal political views, portrayal of
  the ugly side of capitalism, and his
  interpretation of the historical events of the
  Dust Bowl migrations led to backlash against the
  author, especially close to home.
• The Grapes of Wrath was banned from the Salinas
  County public schools and libraries in August
  1939, lasting until January 1941.

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Other Written Works

• During the Second World War, Steinbeck served as
  a war correspondent for the New York Herald
  Tribune.
• Some of his writings from his correspondence days
  were later collected and made into Once There Was
  A War (1958).

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Steinbecks Contribution to Film

• He continued to work in film, writing Alfred
  Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944), and the film A Medal
  for Benny (1945).
• His novel The Moon is Down (1942) became a film
  immediately.
• He wrote The Pearl (1947), already knowing it
  would be filmed, and traveled to Mexico for the
  filming

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East of Eden

• Steinbeck wrote one of his most popular novels,
  East of Eden in 1952.
• Collaborated on the theatrical production of East
  of Eden, James Dean's film debut.

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Awards and Honors

• Seventeen of his works, went on to become
  Hollywood films.
• Steinbeck achieved success as a Hollywood writer,
  earning an Academy Award nomination for Best
  Writing for Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat, in 1945.

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Awards and Honors

• In 1962, Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for
  Literature for his realistic and imaginative
  writing, combining as it does sympathetic humor
  and keen social perception.
• Won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 for The Grapes of
  Wrath.

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The Legacy of Steinbeck

• "His place in U.S. literature is secure. And it
  lives on in the works of innumerable writers who
  learned from him how to present the forgotten man
  unforgettably.
• Steinbeck's works are frequently included on
  required reading lists in American high schools.