1. Of Mice & Men Background Notes
Time: 1930s
The Great Depression
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

2. Oklahoma Dust Bowl

3. Setting of Novel Place General Area Specific 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”

4. 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

5. Author: John Steinbeck
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
Born in Salinas, CA

6. Steinbeck’s Notable Works
Tortilla Flat (1935)
Of Mice and Men (1937)
The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
The Pearl (1947)
East of Eden (1952)

7. Topics in OMM Innocence Friendship Loneliness Discrimination
The American Dream

8. Aspects of Society during OMM
Position of Women
Expectation: get married, depend on a man
Racial Minority Groups
Treated as second class especially African Americans

9. 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.

10. Style of OMM = Naturalism
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

11. 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