1. OF MICE AND MEN By John Steinbeck

2. JOHN STEINBECK Born in Salinas, California in 1902. His most famous books were written in the 1930s & 1940s and are set in California. Steinbeck’s books deal with working class people yearning for a better life. Steinbeck performed well at high school but left university (after five years!) without a degree. Much of the inspiration for his novels comes from life experience – labouring jobs, real incidents. Married three times – distrust of women. His final marriage was a happy one. (1902 – 1968)

3. WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE GREAT DEPRESSION? HINT: WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT MENTAL ILLNESS.

4. THE GREAT DEPRESSION 24 October, 1929, panic overtook the New York Stock Exchange, causing a collapse of share prices (war debts). This in turn caused the economic collapse known as the Great Depression – by 1932 over 100,000 businesses and thousands of banks had failed. People’s jobs and money were lost. Lasted roughly from 1930 until the USA’s entry into the Second World War in 1941.

5. No welfare. No social security. Hardly any help from the state. Families did not have enough food. People were made homeless. Banks foreclosed on loans. WHAT DID THE GREAT DEPRESSION MEAN FOR EVERYDAY PEOPLE?

6. Farmers who could not afford their loan repayments were driven off their farms by banks. Situations were worsened by huge droughts that swept the farmland; carrying off the topsoil and turning the land into desert. DUST BOWL

7. Homeless workers, now migrants, travelled to California in search of work. Due to the abundance of men looking for jobs, employers could take their pick and pay them low wages. Life was hard. THE GREAT AMERICAN DREAM

8. WHAT IS THE GREAT AMERICAN DREAM?

9. CHASING THE AMERICAN DREAM “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest- tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” ( Emma Lazarus) Written on the base of the Statue of Liberty

10. THE AMERICAN DREAM You can be successful if you work hard and live morally. America is the land of opportunity. Freedom to work hard and be happy is enshrined in the Constitution. The Dream assumes equality of opportunity, no discrimination, freedom to follow goals and freedom from victimization.

11. THE AMERICAN DREAM From the 17 th Century onwards, immigrants have dreamed of a better life in America. Many people immigrated to America in search of a new life for themselves or their families. Many others immigrated to escape persecution or poverty in their homeland.

12. WHY MIGRANT WORKERS? Before technology created farm machinery, humans had to do a lot of the farm work by hand. Between the 1880s and the 1930s, thousands of men would travel the countryside in search of work. Such work included the harvesting of wheat and barley.

13. MIGRANT WORKERS These workers would earn $2.50 or $3.00 a day, plus food and shelter. During the 1930s, the unemployment rate was high in the U.S., and with so many men searching for work, agencies were set up to send farm workers to where they were needed. In the novel, George and Lennie (the two main characters) were given work cards from Murray and Ready’s, which was one of the farm work agencies.

14. Accommodation was primitive and unsanitary. People who did not find work were constantly at risk of disease and starvation. People’s senses of being were changed – they were not ‘farm men’ any more, but ‘migrant men’. They were no longer connected to the land. MIGRANTS’ LIFESTYLES

15. Go online and research the Great Depression. Write a paragraph detailing the following (200 words): What was the Great Depression? What would life have been like for a migrant worker? How does this link to the American Dream? Hint: Great Depression = Loss, American Dream = Hope. CLASS TASK: