John Steinbeck Biography Essay

John Steinbeck is one of America’s favorite American Modernist authors. His work deals with the struggle of life, mostly during the Great Depression Era and are centered in and around California. Fortunately for his readers, Steinbeck suffered some of the atrocities his characters suffered in order to bring them his rich experiences with the text. Due to his well-developed characters, pastoral settings, and internal conflicts, high school students and adults can appreciate his writing style.
John Steinbeck focused most of his work in the rural, California setting, which was the home of his childhood. John Steinbeck was “born on February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California, the third child of Olive Hamilton, former school teacher, and John Ernst Steinbeck, Monterey County treasurer” (National Steinbeck 1). It is rumored that Steinbeck decided at a young age to become a writer and only attended college at the request of his parents. Unsatisfied, he received some post-secondary education at Stanford University, dropped out, and became a vagabond who gleaned life experiences from various jobs and travels. These experiences along with his summer jobs on farms and ranches during his childhood equated to a rich life experience for his first and subsequent novels. His travels took him to New York but eventually returned to California to the state he dearly loved.
Through blood, sweat, and tears, Steinbeck became a successful novel writer. His first successful novel was “Tortilla Flat, a humorous novel about paisano life in the Monterey region” (Biography.com 7) that was released in 1935, which

skyrocketed him to achieve real success. However, students across the country use two of his more beloved novels in the classroom. Of Mice and Men published in 1937, is a short novel, or novella, that follows the lives of two displaced migrant workers in search of the American dream. The co-dependent George and Lennie work various farming jobs hoping to earn enough money to purchase a farm of their own; however, Lennie’s inability to control his impulses causes frustration for George and those around them. Even though the widely acclaimed novel is kept alive in the classroom due to his popularity and likable characters, Steinbeck’s epic, The Grapes of Wrath is considered his most recognized and celebrated novel. This novel tells “the story of a dispossessed Oklahoma family and their struggle to carve out a new life in California at the height of the Great Depression, . . . At the height of its popularity, The Grapes of Wrath sold 10,000 copies per week. The work eventually earned Steinbeck a Pulitzer Prize in 1940” (8). Steinbeck published many other novels set in the same California area that dealt with everyday life.
Steinbeck’s longest work was his novel East of Eden, which was published in 1952 and is “set primarily in the Salinas Valley” and is “based roughly on Steinbeck's own family history, pairing the story of the Hamiltons, Steinbeck's maternal ancestors who settled in California with biblical allegory” (National 28). This novel was one of the many novels Steinbeck wrote in his later years. Continuing to be celebrated as a favorite American author, Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. He continued to write and make personal appearances around the world. Steinbeck died in New York in 1968 after an amazing and rich life.
Though gone, Steinbeck will never be forgotten. As long as schools are filled with teachers who want their students to have the experience of rich literature about dynamic characters who struggle within their lives, Steinbeck’s works will be introduced and read every year. Steinbeck is the embodiment of the prolific American author who captures the hearts of his audience.

Works Cited
"John Steinbeck - Biography” Biography.com.

2011. Web. 2 Apr. 2015
“John Steinbeck Biography.” National Steinbeck Center. 2015. Web. 2 Apr. 2015.
“John Steinbeck Family.” Pixgood.com. 2015. Web. 7 Apr. 2015.
“John Steinbeck Nobel Prize.” The Steinbeck Institute. 2015. Web. 7 Apr. 2015.
“John Steinbeck Photograph.” Hu.wikipedia.org,. 2015. Web. 7 Apr.

2015.