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Of Mice and Men. John Steinbeck. John Steinbeck (1902-1968) 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.
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Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck (1902-1968) • 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
Steinbeck’smost 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.
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
Of Mice and Men A Novella
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.
What is a novella? • Not until the lateeighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, did writers fashion the novellainto 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.
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.
SETTING Salinas Valley, California Map State Map Salinas Valley
Monterey County Farm/Ranching Workers Salinas Facts The Great Depression The Migrant Experience
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
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.”
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.
