Author's Life

John Steinbeck was born on February 27th, 1902 to a family in Salinas, California. He was born into a family that consisted of his parents and two older sisters, with another sister being born shortly after him. His family was neither rich nor poor so he had a pretty modest lifestyle growing up. He was close with his family throughout his childhood. John started writing when he was 14 and he would find a real passion for writing. He would enroll at Stanford but he didn’t stay there long as he ended up dropping out in 1925. Steinbeck would then work some odd jobs and he even tried freelance writing but he failed at that and gave it up pretty quick. 

John Steinbeck is a man who wrote about things that he understood. He wrote about stuff that resonated with him and he would use his experiences in his life in pretty much all of his books. That gave his books a sense of realism and it provided authenticity to his stories. As previously mentioned Steinbeck worked a number of different jobs and lived in a bunch of different cities and areas such as all over California, he lived in New York for a short while, and he spent his summers in Long Island. One of his biggest inspirations came from where he was born. Salinas, California is a recurring location in many of his stories. Some of these stories include: The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and most prominently Of Mice and Men. Of Mice and Men uses Salinas to tell the story of Lennie and George where they find work by the Salinas river. Steinbeck supported himself and his passion for writing by working as a manual laborer for a lot of his time and he dedicated the little free time he had to writing. John used this experience and a lot of his other experiences from working all his life to write about.  Like in The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck uses his experiences of working as a journalist while also basing the story in Salinas, California. He uses his farmhand experiences in stories like Of Mice and Men and again The Grapes of Wrath. Because he does this, the story feels real and it really gives insight into what people did as farmhands. Steinbeck also wrote about his experience as a construction worker but he didn’t directly include it in any of his stories. Rather he wrote about it in an essay in 1953. In his books as a whole it is clear that Steinbeck has a theme. He writes about the struggles of the working class to shine light on what things that some people maybe didn’t realize went on. He’s seen some gruesome things in his time and he uses his stories as a way to express that life wasn’t so great for lots of people back in his time. 

In his life, John Steinbeck accomplished many things and was an excellent writer that tried to give people insight into the lives of many people in his stories. His first ever novel was a book called Cup of Gold. It didn’t gain much traction though and nothing of his would until about six years after he wrote Cup of Gold that he would have a big breakthrough. He wrote a story called Tortilla Flat and he published it in 1935. This is widely considered by most to be his turning point and people discovered Steinbeck and his books took off from there. He would go on a roll and publish hit after hit leading to him writing over 30 books. Because of his excellent writing his novel, The Grapes of Wrath, would win a Pulitzer prize in 1939. But as a culmination of all of his novels Steinbeck would be awarded the National Book award in 1940 and the Nobel prize in 1962. But even crazier than that is John Steinbeck would be presented with the US medal of freedom in 1964 by president at the time Lyndon B. Johnson. Steinbeck obviously was a very successful author and he accomplished a lot over his lifetime. But the impacts he had that can’t be measured are arguably just as impressive if not more impressive than his long list of medals and prizes. Steinbeck indirectly educated the world about the working class. His books raised awareness towards the issue of poverty. He especially focused on migrant farm workers in a couple of his books and his stories humanized these workers and other people saw the working class as humans. This was so huge because people just trying to make a living by doing anything they could find that would pay them were almost looked down upon. But with the help of Steinbeck, these people got the support and empathy of people all across the country. Steinbeck's biggest achievement was making people respect each other and see people for who they really are and not what they did for work