Cannery Row Essay

Everyone’s role in society varies depending on their profession and their community. In Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, each member brings their own value to their ecosystem. Doc Ricketts, the marine biologist., is one of the many people who showcases another side to Cannery Row and the other members of the system. Doc Ricketts is perceived differently in a general society where he would be seen the complete opposite from Steinbeck’s view of Doc being perfect.

Within the 1937 Depression-Era novel, Of Mice and Men, scribed by John Steinbeck, he implements complex, multi-dimensional characters in which they mutually possess an American Dream, yet they are distinctive in their most aesthetic, indigenous form. Characters including Curley’s Wife, Crooks, and George Milton have always theorized their life in Utopian lifestyles, in the setting of America, but is oppressed by external and internal means that is explored throughout the literature. Notably, George, the co-protagonist, has such ambition to live in a domesticated household in contradiction to the vagrancy he experience, while carrying the weight of having a fraternal-paternal relationship with Lennie, a man approximately his age with an evident disability. His

In the book The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald Nick said a very intriguing phrase while speaking to Jordan baker, the phrase was, “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.” I think that Nick feels that the majority of the human population falls between these four categories, and that not everyone can live the lives that they want to. An example of this is the category of the pursuing. The category of the pursuing consists of people that already have something but wants more, like Gatsby. Gatsby falls into this category because he already has a great education and a large sum of money, but is not content and continues to want Daisy to be his wife. This relates to a quote from The Pearl by John Steinbeck that says,

John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men is a timeless classic. Within the novel emerges many themes and life lessons: loneliness, friendship, survival, and more. However, though these seem to be the most central ideas of the novel, none of them could have been concluded without one major element. That element is setting. John Steinbeck himself was born in Salinas, California and grew up in that fertile valley. The environment and nature had a huge role in shaping and developing many of his works, and Of Mice and Men is no exception. The novel is centered around Soledad and the Salinas River in California during the Great Depression. This information that is given to the readers is just surface knowledge. To truly dive below the surface of understanding

Money can cause many problems in the our lives and relationships, such as isolation and depression. Also, people tend to look more of what they, themselves, are able to get out of people instead of looking at people for who they are. In John Steinbeck’s three novels Of Mice and Men, Tortilla Flat, and In Dubious Battle , he addresses the problems that money can create. This is what, in the end, causes most of the problems for the different characters. Of Mice and Men is about two men who look for jobs after the Great Depression. Tortilla Flat is about how five men function in a small town. In Dubious Battle is about two men who helped a camp of pickers start a strike to raise their pay. Steinbeck illustrates the power of money to isolate and depress the characters, and, in doing this, calls attention to the negative consequences of money in the reader’s life.

The novellas Of Mice and Men and The Pearl are both often noted as social criticisms. The author, John Steinbeck addresses real-life issues that society is facing. Whether through direct statements and comments, or through a fictional characters’ situation, Steinbeck criticizes just some of the problems of society. He shows the way people are discriminated against, and why. He shows the issues society faces. Author John Steinbeck explores multiple real life issues in both works, and provides a message of how unfair the world is, as well as show how cruel humans can be to differences.

Classic American works of literature have recurring themes involving tales of friendship, loneliness, and appreciation of life. Novels to teach the coming generations, they clearly depict the struggles and dreams every average family or folk by providing simple plots every reader can relatively relate to. John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is no exception to the rule. Following the daily lives of two friends, the cliche of internal struggle is prevalent throughout the duration of the novel. From the depictions of actions and attributes of the characters, themes, and plot, audiences can obviously pluck out the cliche. When narrowed down, the cliche in Of Mice and Men is a story about a man, George, struggling to decide whether he should pursue aspirations or abandon completely.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck has a powerful setting that combines well with the tone of the story. The story setting takes place through the Great Depression, which left several people in vain for work and money. Tone is explained to be the attitudes that an author has towards a subject. From the beginning of the book readers become aware of the tone being sympathetic, realistic, and honest.

The theme greed is always shown in the book “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain. The author shows it in so many ways, for example when the author says “Oh, please don’t, boys; I swear I won’t ever tell!”. This shows greed because he wants to take the bad guys boat to capture the men. Another quote that shows greed in the book is “There was trouble ‘bout something and then a lawsuit to settle it; And the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the man that won the suit…” After this happened Miss Sophia Grangerford is going to marry Harney Shepherdson and the two families both fight each other blaming the other family and this caused a lot of greed and violence. Tom sawyer is greedy for fame and adventure. The author

Desmond Tutu, a South - African social activist and retired Anglican priest once said “ Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness”. Of Mice and Men is a novel which revolves around the lives of struggling farmers and how they still maintain hope despite their hardships. The symbolic representation of light embodies the hopes and the American Dream, whereas the dark epitomizes the harsh realities and truths of their lives. Steinbeck uses light and dark to foreshadow the upcoming events in the forlorn lives of the migrant workers. He also combines aspects such as the setting and characters with light and dark to paint a vivid picture in the reader’s mind as to how the world of the migrant workers looks like.

The author Dean Koontz once said, “...the most identifying trait of humanity is our ability to be inhumane to one another.” Although there are many hopeful aspects in people, the inhumanity of people is inevitable. In the novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Lennie Small and George Milton discover the hardships and the hope in life as migrant workers during the Depression era. Though their hope for a better life dwindles throughout their journey, Lennie and George’s dream of owning their own farm help to distract them from their harsh reality of despondency. Steinbeck reveals the bitter nature of mankind due to weakness and vulnerability through his use of symbolism, characterization, and imagery.

Community, so close to Steinbeck’s heart, is exaggerated in every possible way in this novel. In an eloquent way, he molds the reader’s hearts to believe that a communal soul (or oversoul) is best for the people as well. Truly, the language and rhetoric applied in order to encourage this philosophy is unlike any other writing by Steinbeck, or any other socialist writer for that

Of Mice and Men, set in California’s Salinas Valley, depicts the world of the migrant worker, a world in which Steinbeck himself had lived, and the workers’ search for independence. Steinbeck was critical of what he perceived as the United States’ materialism, and his work echoes his convictions about the land and its people. Like the characters in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), Of Mice and Men’s George and Lennie dream of a piece of land to call their

“The Grapes of Wrath” is still of the classics of American literature. This work remains banned in many school libraries across the nation because some critics said it contains full of lies of American life in that period and highly pro-communist. It is because Steinbeck created the work because of showing difficulties of many Americans who had The Great Depression and The Dust Owl. Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” can be discussed by many critical theories but Marxist criticism which I will be discussing here is the one of the most common lenses through which to read the novel. This is because Steinbeck’s narrative shows the exact problems that a capitalist society describes working class people. We will read/discuss the work to see how the