The Novels Of John Steinbeck

It was the author's connectedness with ordinary working common people that sooner or later gave him literary success, even though his premier three novels were not a huge success. (Pastures of Heaven, Cup of Gold and To A God Unknown). Receiving his best acclamation for 'Tortilla Flat', he carried on to develop his perennial theme of social unfairness, writing 'In Dubious Battle' in 1936.

'Of Mice and Men', a short novel of two migrant farm laborers was well received, and his next novel 'Grapes of Wrath' was the biggest success of all Steinbeck books and won him the Pulitzer Prize and additionally the National Book Award. Even though always making a social comment, John Steinbeck Books drew on the spirited humor apparent in the tough lives of traveling farm workers, and particularly migrant workers.

In subsequent years, John Steinbeck books were much softer, and generally didn't display the penetrating comment about the richer classes and their abuse of the working classes. The name of one of John Steinbeck's most famous novels is taken from the poem about a mouse penned Robert Burns, a poet from Scotland. Loosely translated (the old poem was created in old Scottish prose) - it says " the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray". The central theme of Of Mice and Men demonstrates touchingly how we strive for the best, reach for heaven and often the outcome is very different, leaving us forlorn.

John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men

The two primary characters, and buddies of undetermined term, are named George and Lennie and their aim is to work enough, salt away a pot of money so that they may live the good life in a far off place. Lennie is a big giant of a man with slow intellect, while Lennie is skinny and quick thinking. George looks out for Lenny and keeps him from getting into trouble while the pair move around the land, working where they can, and thieving a bit when they can't.

The pattern carries on until they arrive at a ranch with a rancher's son that has a mean streak, who also has a pretty wife who is bored with her lonely life. It soon surfaces that Lennie has secrets in his past ...

Grapes of Wrath

Few novels have grabbed the consciousness of the mass of American people like Steinbeck's great novel, Grapes of Wrath. Differences between the haves and the have-nots in society have always been with us, but the Big Depression made it acutely evident - it brought it home. In the surroundings of the dust bowl crisis of the nineteen thirties, a time of devastating drought and extreme poverty forced a family from their small farm to search the good life in California - Grapes Of Wrath is the story of Tom Joad and his family searching for an honest living in California in the depression.