John Steinbeck
Reading Comprehension
John Steinbeck was a Nobel prize winning
writer born in California in 1902. He was
also a father, husband, war correspondent,
farmhand, social commentator, and person
of interest to the FBI. Like many of the
characters he created, he suffered with
mental health problems, alcoholism and
marital disharmony. Described as having
a ‘permanent chip on his shoulder’ and
‘sadistic’, while also being America’s ‘social
conscience’: who was this complex man?
And can the events of his life enable us to
understand him and the stories he told?
Steinbeck in Numbers
Early Life
Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California to
John Ernst Steinbeck and Olive Hamilton,
the county treasurer and a former teacher.
He grew up surrounded by the picturesque
beauty of rural California’s fields, farms and
forests that form many of the settings in his
novels. He left high school in 1919 and went to
study English Literature at Stanford University,
although he left without a degree. Known for
his sympathetic depictions of poor migrant
communities, it would be remiss to imply
Steinbeck’s upbringing was less than middle
class, however he did spend time working on
ranches and farms with migrant workers and
even witnessed a murder that would form
the basis of a plot in Of Mice and Men. This
had a lasting impact on him and in 1937 he
was quoted in the New York Times speaking of
the perpetrator:
16 novels and novellas
2 sets of short stories
11 non-fiction books
2 plays
2 screenplays
1 Nobel Prize
60 pencils used in a day
“He’s in an insane asylum right now.
I worked alongside him for many
weeks. He killed a ranch foreman…
stuck a pitchfork right through his
stomach. I hate to tell you how many
times. I saw him do it. We couldn’t
stop him until it was too late.”
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Photo by Sarah Jamerson (CC BY 2.0) - (Cropped)
Great Dust Storm
by Woody Guthrie
On the 14th day of April of 1935,
There struck the worst of dust
storms that ever filled the sky.
You could see that dust storm
comin’, the cloud looked
deathlike black,
And through our mighty nation,
it left a dreadful track.
From Oklahoma City to the
Arizona line,
Dust Storm, Kansas, 1935.
The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl
Many
of
Steinbeck’s
experiences
and
relationships can be seen to be echoed in his
writings. In 1929 the stock market crashed,
and unemployment went from 3% to 25% by
1933. To compound the already dire economic
conditions Americans were living in, a period of
severe dust storms led to what became known
as the Dust Bowl; a drought-stricken area of
the Midwest and Southern Great Plains in
the United States, where people and animals
were killed, crops failed, and many were left
homeless and desperate. On April 14th 1935
a horrendous storm blew in, this came to be
known as Black Sunday and was sung about by
folk singer Woody Guthrie.
The effects of the Dust Bowl were enormous,
7000 people were killed, 2 million left homeless
and food production drastically affected. This
led to half a million people moving to California
looking for work. They were known as the ‘Dust
Bowl refugees’ or the more derogatory ‘okie’ -
Dakota and Nebraska to the lazy
Rio Grande,
It fell across our city like a
curtain of black rolled down,
We thought it was our
judgement, we thought it was
our doom.
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short for Oklahoma. Many lived in Weedpatch
Camp, a migrant workers’ camp. They slept in
canvas tents which were eventually replaced
with wooden shacks. Steinbeck’s texts Of
Mice and Men and especially, The Grapes of
Wrath, portray the lives of migrant workers;
victims of the unique economic and ecological
circumstances they found themselves in.
Steinbeck lived and worked with displaced
migrant refugees, helping to rescue 4,0005,000 families affected by the California floods
in 1938. He wasn’t merely commentating on
their lives but experiencing the diabolical
misery they faced, reporting it to the masses
and committing it to the history books.
War Time
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
As if the 1930s hadn’t already presented
Steinbeck and his contemporaries with
enough challenges, 1941 saw America join
the Allied forces in World War Two. Steinbeck
was frustrated. He was working on the home
front but desperately wanted to be in on the
action, writing as a war correspondent and
telling the stories of the war. He managed
to get more than he bargained for: first
by assigning himself to a secret special
operations unit in Italy. This unit was led by
Douglas Fairbanks Jr, a Hollywood star now
commando leader and, while reporting on
this deceptive operation, which involved
tricking the Axis forces, Steinbeck found
himself part of the action, removing his
reporter’s badge and joining the soldiers in
the deadly battle. The explosions caused both
Steinbeck’s eardrums to burst. Steinbeck
did what he set out to do; tell the stories
of the war, but as he wrote them, he sat
among exploding bombs, corpses and death
becoming much more than just a spectator.
Hollywood star, Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
California Floods, 1938.
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Steinbeck and Hitchcock
In 1943, renowned director Alfred Hitchcock
asked Steinbeck to write a script for a film.
Steinbeck wrote a novella which was then
turned into a script by several other writers.
However, after watching the finished product
Lifeboat, Steinbeck was horrified with the
presentation of a Black character he had
created and wrote to the studio, 20th Century
Fox, to ask them to remove his name from the
film. Steinbeck said he had created a character,
with “dignity, purpose and personality” yet
Hitchcock, “one of those incredible English
middle-class snobs who really and truly despise
working people” had portrayed the man as
“half comic and half pathetic”.
Steinbeck lived among open racists and bigots
during a period of history when segregation
meant Black and White people couldn’t even
drink from the same water fountains. After
being questioned about his ancestry, specifically
whether he was Jewish, he responded:
“I am sad for a time when one must
know a man’s race before his work can
be approved or disapproved.”
He was aware of the dangers of stereotyping
and the power of representation. After his
early novel Tortilla Flat was published and its
depictions of Mexican people were considered
to be playing into a negative stereotype,
Steinbeck made a public apology:
“Had I known that these stories and
these people would be considered
quaint, I think I never should have
written them… If I have done them
harm by telling a few of their stories I
am sorry. It will never happen again.”
The Importance of Friendship
Male friendship and the importance of
companionship as an antidote to existential
loneliness is one of the recurring themes in
Steinbeck’s writing. In life, Steinbeck showed
a great depth of sensitivity and emotional
intelligence in his male friendships. In 1930,
while at the dentist, he met Ed Ricketts, the
ecologist and inspiration for the character of
Doc in Cannery Row. Ricketts and Steinbeck
became great friends and influenced each
other’s lives. Ricketts ran the Pacific Biological
Laboratories and Steinbeck would help
preserve specimens and spend many hours
in the lab with him. Together they travelled to
Mexico, researching what would become the
book The Sea of Cortez. Today, Ricketts’ book
on marine biology, Between Pacific Tides is still
considered a vital text for any aspiring marine
biologist. Ricketts died in a horrific motor
accident in 1948, when his car was crushed
by an oncoming train and, a few years later,
Steinbeck wrote an autobiographical essay
about his dear friend, which demonstrates the
depth of love he had for him:
“It wasn’t Ed who had died but a large
and important part of oneself.”
Ricketts shared and encouraged Steinbeck’s
love of nature and ecology, and his belief that
both the internal world of thoughts and human
feeling, and the external world of trees, animals
and seasons were vital and symbiotic.
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and their troubles. The book was banned
from county libraries and schools and burned
in several places, including Kern County,
California - one of its settings. The ban lasted
for 18 months, but behind the scenes librarian
Gretchen Knief campaigned to have the rule
overturned.
Not only was the rule eventually reversed but
the entire ordeal was fundamental in leading
to the Library Bill of Rights, which gives seven
guiding principles including: the freedom of
information; the presentation of information
offering all points of view; the challenging of
censorship and right to access for all regardless
of origin, age, background, or views.
Cottage just outside the tiny town of Bruton,
Somerset so Steinbeck could focus on writing
about Camelot, King Arthur and the Knights of
the Round Table. The couple loved their time
there. From their cottage they had a view of
Glastonbury Tor. However, on his deathbed,
he wrote that his months in Somerset were
some of the happiest in his life and his wife
commented that “Bruton [was] the only spot in
the world [she] refused to see since John died.”
“Banning books is so
utterly hopeless and futile.
Ideas don’t die because a book
is forbidden reading.”
Gretchen Knief,
librarian in Kern County, 1939
Banned Books
Somerset
In 1939, The Grapes of Wrath was published
to immense success. It sold 430,000 in its first
year of publication and has sold over 14 million
copies to date! However, not all readers were
enamoured by the depiction of the Joad family
The ‘giant of American letters’ whose beloved
California can be seen so beautifully depicted
in his writing had another rural love, over the
pond in England. For nine months in 1959,
Steinbeck and his wife Elaine rented Discove
Steinbeck’s desk and texts on display in
Bruton Museum.
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Is Steinbeck still relevant?
The 21st century is a time where anyone’s
opinion can be shared or accessed from a
tiny computer in your pocket. Why should the
opinions of a dead writer from 90 years ago
hold any sway? Wouldn’t it make more sense to
listen to the voices of today?
Perhaps we should heed the advice of
philosopher George Santayana who warned,
“those who ignore history are doomed to
repeat it”. It certainly seems the same societal
outrage that can be seen on social media today,
the same urgency and momentum to improve
the world we live in environmentally; politically;
socially; are the same causes Steinbeck was
championing through his pen and paper in the
early 20th century. He
may not have had the
reach of a social media
platform, but he used
the platforms available
to him to write and
tell the stories of the
ordinary people who
were
suffering
at
the actions of other
humans.
The Dust Bowl was a manmade ecological
disaster, caused by harmful farming methods
and today, in the face of climate change,
ecologists are warning that similar incidents
are likely to occur every 40 years or so. The
mistreatment of migrant workers Steinbeck
wrote to humanise and campaign for, is echoed
in the mistreatment of immigrants, also torn
from their homes, and just searching for
survival. The brutal racism and abuse of the
character of Crooks in Of Mice and Men isn’t a
fiction confined to the 1930s, systemic racism
permeates our current society. Steinbeck wrote
didactically to help educate people about these
issues and the historical documentation of
that society and its current relevance deserves
recognition.
Journalist
Scott
Bradfield
wrote,
“John
Steinbeck didn’t believe in God—but he didn’t
believe much in humanity either.” However, for
someone who seems to despair at humanity, he
offers glimpses of hope through his characters,
and in the effect his writing may have on those
who read it.
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