John Steinbeck: Life Of An American

4 Pages 988 Words

“When I face the desolate impossibility of writing 500 pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's works is all I can permit myself to contemplate.” The famous, and sometimes infamous John Steinbeck said this. He, one day at a time, wrote thousands of pages of engaging material for various newspapers, magazines, and his own books. He incorporated various writing styles and portrayed hundreds of different locations in his works, but through it all, he had one theme: injustice. He changed it through many sub themes: Homelessness, migration, poverty, moral responsibility, the underside of the American Dream, and The Common Man. Steinbeck had unlimited empathy for the working class.
John Ernst Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902. He was born into a Middle Class family to German and Irish Parents. His father, John Steinbeck Sr., was a county treasurer. His mother, Olivia Hampton-Steinbeck, was a teacher who taught him love for the written word. He had three siblings, but was the only son of John and Olivia Steinbeck. He was born in Salinas Valley, California, and had an adolescence appreciating nature and hard work. He attended Salinas High School in 1915 and went on to Stanford in 1919. He studied Literary Arts until 1925, when he left college without a degree. For the next several years he worked odd jobs, such as a sales clerk, farm laborer, ranch hand, factory worker, and a construction worker. In 1929, he became a caretaker for summer home in Lake Tahoe, California. That year he published his first novel, Cup of Gold, in August. In 1930 he was married for the first time to Carol Henning. That year, in October, he met Edward F. Ricketts, a Marine Biologist and Philosopher, who makes several appearances in Steinbeck’s books, such as Doc in Cannery Row (1945).
For several years Steinbeck wrote stories (The Pastures of...