John Steinbeck: A Unique Position In American Literature

Steinbeck’s use of rhetorical strategies throughout the passage enables him to illustrate his message about free will, emphasizing the potential and significance of timshel and creativity in the essence of humanity and the threats against it. He utilizes diction, imagery, and rhetorical appeals to elucidate his message and persuade readers of their role in asserting their individuality. Steinbeck’s use of imagery in the first paragraph illustrates the extent of the potential of free will through his vivid description of the “glory [that] lights up the mind of a man” (Steinbeck 131) and its transformative qualities. This is significant as it delineates the role of free will in humanity, defining a “man’s importance in the world.” (Steinbeck

On February 27, 1902 in Salinas Valley, California John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. was born to John Ernst Steinbeck Sr. and Olive Hamilton Steinbeck. He lived a modest childhood, as his father held multiple jobs in order to support the family.

John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California on February 27, 1902 he grown up in middle class home where his father was a multiple job holding to feed the family and his mother was a schoolteacher. Steinbeck only went to college in pursuit to please his parents because he drifted in and out for six years and still came out with no degree. (Biography.com) Now that you have some background information about john I’m now give you information into where he got the idea of writing Of Mice and Men in an interview with New York Times John said “Lennie was a real person. I worked alongside him for many weeks. He didn’t kill a girl. He killed a ranch foreman. Got sore because the boss had fired his pal and stuck a pitchfork right through his stomach. (What is the actual story behind "Of Mice and Men"? )

The author of one of the best selling novels including Of Mice and Men, the third child of Olive Hamilton and a hard working boy in the “Salad Bowl of the Nation”, John Steinbeck. Steinbeck was brought up in Salinas, California during the Great Depression. This might have influenced his setting for Of Mice and Men. As well as George and Lennie life as a farm worker, since Steinbeck also grew up in a farm setting.

Of Mice and Men was an excellent novel about two migrant workers traveling in Southern California, trying to make enough money to fulfill their dream of attaining their own plot of land. They have trouble accomplishing this goal when Lennie, the big and clueless on of the two, consistently makes mistakes, some of them being vital. The author, John Steinbeck, uses great techniques and literary devices that build up to the climax and resolution. Throughout the story, he describes how several characters all have/had dreams or goals, but none of them truly achieved those dreams. All of these literary devices, techniques, and the entire plot lead up to my thesis statement. Steinbeck uses dialogue and conflict to project his belief that dreams

People’s realities are shaped by their experiences of failing while trying to achieve their dreams. For years people have shaped and/or destroyed their reality by trying to catch their dreams. People strive everyday to achieve their dreams, but in reality they never will. John Steinbeck uses many rhetorical appeals to help the reader understand how the American Dream can be with his experiences using ethos, paradox, and repetition.

War. What starts a war? The misuse of power. In the realistic fiction novella Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, there are many different ways to show power. The men encounter many minor conflicts because of issues with power. In John Steinbeck’s novella Of Mice and Men, he explores some of the different types of power through power in strength, wealth/social class, and knowledge.

In John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, the archetypal mother figure of Olive Hamilton, who is modeled after the author’s own mother, is sharply contrasted with the novel’s antagonist, the ultimate anti-mother figure of Cathy Ames. This juxtaposition of characters highlights not only Olive’s loving, selfless nature, but also Cathy’s diabolical, egocentric one.

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 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.

As a young man John Steinbeck worked with his father at a food and grain store. He suffered money issues and social issues. He won a prize in 1940 and 1964. Steinbeck wrote 3 books and got a award from them. Every book he wrote was about the Great Depression. Steinbeck was in Stanford university but never graduated from it. He never seemed to be able to keep a woman as he was married 3 times. He had a couple of children then ended up dying from a heart failure. He was important because he was the only one who wrote about the Great Depression.

“A twitch at the controls could swerve the cat’ , but the driver’s hands could not twitch because the monster that built the tractor, the monster that sent the tractor out, had somehow got into the driver’s hands into his brain and muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him- goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest.” (35)

John Steinbeck has a style of writing unparalleled in history and in the modern world.

Of mice and men is a prominent book read by most high school students for a long time. Of mice and men is a book written by John Steinbeck. In the book George and Lennie had to run out of weed, so they looked for a ranch to work on. Lennie had issues with liking soft things that lead to him killing Curley's’ Wife and a puppy. To express that the american dream is impossible to achieve Steinbeck uses conversations, conflicts, and events.

“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