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

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