Of Mice & Men Background Notes
Time: 1930s
The Great Depression
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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
Oklahoma Dust Bowl
Setting of Novel
Place
• 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
•Born in Salinas, CA
•1902-1968
• 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
Steinbeck’s Notable Works
• Tortilla Flat (1935)
• Of Mice and Men
(1937)
• The Grapes of Wrath
(1939)
• The Pearl (1947)
• East of Eden (1952)
Topics in OMM
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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 AfricanAmericans
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
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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:
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.
Naturalism
Pros
Cons
Writing life “as it should be”
Pros
Cons