Of Mice And Men

« Of Mice and Men Biography: John Ernst Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California on February 27, 1902.

His father was the county treasurer and his mother was a former school teacher.

She inspired and his love of books and reading.

Steinbeck was not a brilliant student and when he left Stanford University, it was without a degree.

He tried various jobs that brought him into contact with the working class and the lower strata of society.

In 1925 - at the time of the Depression - Steinbeck went to New York to work as a reporter for the New York American, but he did not succeed.

He returned to California and, as a tough and proud man, worked at a variety of jobs to earn a living: laboratory worker, farmhand, dishwasher, factory worker and janitor.

This experience gave him rich material for his later novels.

The daunting details of life on a ranch and the loneliness of the itinerant workers in "Of Mice and Men" are illustrations of his life experience.

It was also a time when he spent a great deal of time reading and began to write in a lonely cabin. In 1930, Steinbeck married -for the first time- and moved to a very middle-class suburb that would become the subject of several attacks from his pen and would later appear in various novels.

He also met a marine biologist, Edward Ricketts, who would strongly influence Steinbeck's life and work.

They collaborated on writing a sea voyage and published an account of the trip.

Some descriptions in "The Pearl" are certainly influenced by Ricketts. Steinbeck's first publication was Cup of Gold in 1929, but his first major success that established him as an important writer was Tortilla Flat in 1935.

Two years later, he published Of Mice and Men, which reached an even wider audience before his most famous book, The Grapes of Wrath, in 1939.

This masterpiece earned Steinbeck the Pulitzer Prize in 1940.

Like many of his books, one of its major themes is that of exploitation.

The story takes place during the Depression of the 1930s and follows the fate of a family of farm workers who migrate from the "great American dust bowl of the Southern states to the promised land of California." This theme of exploitation of the poor and week-old, mixed with broken dreams and hopes, runs through all of his novels. Characters: Lennie Small: - an indefinable and corpulent creature whose childish mentality continually puts him in difficult situations with men who neither respect nor understand him. - He moves like a bear and has the strength of a bear, but his actions are often described as those of a dog.

- Lennie's personality resembles that of a child.

He is innocent and mentally deficient, unable to understand abstract concepts like death.

- Lennie's prodigious strength, combined with his lack of intelligence and awareness, makes him dangerous, and he needs George to keep him out of trouble. George Milton: - a small and skinny man, used to fighting for his place in the world.

He watches over and protects Lennie.

- He has a sense of responsibility because he has to take care of Lennie.

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