Of Mice & Men Background Notes

The Great Depression• 1929-1942

• Stock Market Crash

• Drought --> Dust Bowl

• Farmers went into bankruptcy -- lost their farms and had to move.

• Banks closed, people lost savings, awful inflation

• Unemployment, no minimum wage

Time: 1930s

Oklahoma Dust Bowl

Setting of NovelPlace• General Area

– Salinas, California• Valley, rural area,

farming community• California seen as the

“Promised Land”

• Specific Area– Ranch “a few miles south

of Soledad”– What does “Soledad”

mean in Spanish?• “loneliness” or “solitude”

Significance . . .• Influx of itinerant workers.

– Workers who move from place to place.

• Roamed from farm to farm in California– Why? New season = new crops

• Mostly single men

• “Rootless and isolated” existence– Most traveled alone and had

no place to call home– Had a yearning for a home

but no way to secure it

Author: John Steinbeck• 1919-1925 attended Stanford

University -- left without a degree

• Supported himself at times by working as a “bindle stiff”

• On the farms, listened to stories and absorbed speech patterns of migrant workers

• Quoted in NY Times in 1937: “Lennie was a real person . . . I worked alongside him for many weeks.”

• Considered to be one of the finest 20th century American authors

•Born in Salinas, CA

•1902-1968

Steinbeck’s Notable Works

• Tortilla Flat (1935)• Of Mice and Men

(1937)• The Grapes of Wrath

(1939)

• The Pearl (1947)• East of Eden (1952)

Themes in OMM

• Innocence • Friendship• Loneliness• Discrimination• The American Dream

Aspects of Society during OMM

• Position of Women– Expectation: get married, depend on a

man

• Racial Minority Groups– Treated as second class

-- especially African- Americans

Aspects of Society during OMM• Individuals with Learning differences

– Considered “insane” or “crazy” and thought of as dangerous– No schooling or facilities; were often sent to asylums

• The Elderly– Depended on their families -- no Social Security– Harder to find jobs -- workers were judged

by their physical ability, endurance, and usefulness.

Style of OMM = Naturalism

• Movement in writing in Steinbeck’s time

• Goal: Show life EXACTLY as it is

• Avoids euphemism and exaggeration.

• The reality of a specific part of society

• Philosophy: not ONE person or thing is ever at sole fault for what happens

Controversy Surrounding Steinbeck’s work:

Naturalism

Pros Cons

Writing life “as it should be”

Pros Cons

In 1936, Steinbeck stated: “For too long, the language of books was different from the language of men. To the men I write about, profanity is adornment and ornament and is NEVER vulgar and I try to write it so.”

He does NOT do it for shock value, or effect, or to garner audience. It’s written that way because that was the reality of the situation at the time.