1. Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck

2. From a family of moderate means
John Steinbeck ( )
Born in Salinas, California
From a family of moderate means
Worked his way through Stanford University, never graduated
Went to New York, 1925
Tried to establish himself as a free-lance writer, failed
Returned to California.
First became widely known with Tortilla Flat (1935), a series of humorous stories about Monterey paisanos.
Novels all classified as social novels dealing with the economic problems of rural labor

4. Steinbeck’s most celebrated novel
remains The Grapes of Wrath:
…the story of the Joads,
impoverished farmers
who migrate to California
after losing their Oklahoma
land.
Published in 1939, the novel
The Grapes of Wrath won the
National Book Award and the
Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

5. Steinbeck’s frequent topic was the plight of the misfits, the homeless and the hopeless in a fast-changing America.
Curly’s Wife
Lenny and George
Candy and his dog

6. Of Mice and Men
A Novella

7. The structure of this novella is clear and quite simple: Opening chapter begins at a beautiful stream close to the ranch…
…each chapter is an extended episode, in the same place. Some things happen over a weekend, while others, which have already happened, are re-told (George tells Slim about Weed; Whit tells the hands about Bill Tenner's letter; Curley's wife tells Lennie about her past).
…the closing chapter ends at the beautiful stream.

8. What is a novella?
Not until the late eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, did writers fashion the novella into a literary genre.
A prose fiction longer than a long story, but shorter than a short novel. ( roughly 40,000 words—80 to 300 pages)
The essence of a novella is that it has a concentrated unity of purpose and design. (character, incident, theme, and language
all focused on contributing to a single issue which will be of a serious nature and universal significance)
Novellas are restricted to a single, suspenseful event, situation, or conflict leading to an unexpected turning point, provoking a logical, but surprising end.

9. Many classic novellas are concerned with people
learning important lessons or making
significant journeys. (Often both at the same
time)
Novellas tend to contain a concrete symbol, which is the
narration's steady point.

10. Salinas Valley, California
SETTING
Salinas Valley, California
Map State
Map Salinas Valley

11. Monterey County Farm/Ranching
Workers
Salinas Facts
The Great Depression
The Migrant Experience

12. Dialect
A dialect is a variety of a language characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers.[1] The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class.[2]
Pronunciation
“ I was only foolin’, Georgel”
“I won’t get in no trouble, George. I ain’t gonna say a word.”
Grammar
“When I think of the swell time I could have without you…”
Vocabulary

13. The number of speakers, and the geographical area covered by them, can be of arbitrary size, and a dialect might contain several sub-dialects. A dialect is a complete system of verbal communication (oral or signed, but not necessarily written) with its own vocabulary and grammar.
“Whatta you want?”
“I was just foolin’”
“we’ll just say the hell with goin’ to work…”
“…if you jus’ happen to get in trouble like you always done before, I want you to come right here an’ hide in the brush.”

14. A dialect that is associated with a particular social class can be termed a sociolect.
Other speech varieties include: standard languages; jargons, which are characterized by differences in lexicon (vocabulary); and slang.