Essay About World War And Great Depression

John Steinbeck
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John Steinbeck was born in February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California. Salinas was
an agricultural valley in California. His father was the county treasurer and
his mother was a schoolteacher. This is where his education began from a mother
that encouraged him to read. The community was a comfortable environment for him
to live in because of the encouragement of independence and initiative. His
parents didnt want him to be a writer. They wanted him to have a true
profession as a lawyer. His early interest in reading led him through school,
with his main interest in science. At age 15 he decided to become a writer,
influenced by an English teacher, and faintly remembered by schoolmates for
spending so much time in his room writing. After graduating from high school, he
went to Stanford University in 1920. While he was there for five he contributed
to the school paper by writing poems and comics. He took courses in science and
writing, but never received a degree. In 1925, when he left Stanford, he became
a marine biologist. He moved to New York in 1925 to work as a reporter for a
newspaper. Always being a non-conformist, he was fired from the newspaper for
writing opinions instead of facts. This started the many jobs he would be a part
of in his lifetime. Some of these jobs include an apprentice hod carrier, an
apprentice printer, a working chemist, caretaker of Lake Tahoe Estate, surveyor
in Big Sur County, and a fruit picker. He also worked other more physically
labored jobs, such as a rancher, road worker, deck hand, cotton picker, and
bricklayer. While involved in these jobs, he made many close friends that he
came to admire because of their “cant and hypocrisy” which he applauded and
whom all of these people soon were characters in his novels. Many of these
experiences were the “helpers” to his many novels. His fruit picking and
Great Depression led him to write The Grapes of Wrath, his best known and most
ambitious of his works. Also, he wrote Of Mice and Men, which was formed from
his job as a hired hand on the many farms he worked. Many things affected his
writing of the time period of which he wrote. Things like the Great Depression,
World War 2, and the Vietnam War are the major influences. World War 2 was when
he was working for the federal government as a writer, so his works focused on
greed and materialism in the beings of modern civilization, Cannery Row and The
Wayward Bus are two good examples of this idea. After World War 2, he wrote
mainly of several outcasts. The Grapes of Wrath was an influential piece from
the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl that existed in California. It is about
the migration of farm families, leaving their old towns to become “ghost
towns.” A bit of inventions came into effect during this time period.
Technology was changing the way that Americans lived and worked. The player
piano was invented in 1905. Henry Ford Model T in 1908. Everyone has heard of