John Steinbeck
...in my profession.” (George 1) This is a quote by John Steinbeck that shows exactly how he felt about being a writer. Steinbeck, a Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize for Literature winner, is a very popular author in the United States of America, even after his death. He is known for his very realistic portrayals of the working class society, especially in his beloved Salinas, California. He was also a prominent spokesman for the victims of the Great Depression. Most importantly, Steinbeck understood that readers wanted to know the truth in the world. The truth that he would write about, he found much of in his early life.
John Ernst Steinbeck was born February 27, 1902 of German and Irish heritage. His parents were John and Olive Steinbeck. Steinbeck's father was a quiet, disappointed man who had failed at managing a mill and failed, again, at running his own feed store. Perhaps as a reaction to this, Steinbeck's mother, a former school teacher, was filled with ambition for her son. She hoped he would be a doctor or lawyer. She was very important to John, as well as to American literature, because she is why he became interested in literature. (Bloom 19) It was his one of his greatest disappointments that neither parent of his lived to see him achieve his huge success as a writer. He had a very typical childhood for a boy that lived in Salinas in the early twentieth century. He had two older sisters, Esther and Beth, who adored him to death. He also had a third sister, Mary, who was three years younger than him. He and Mary shared a pony which stayed in a stable just a couple of blocks away from their house. (Bloom 21) His parents were involved in the local community. Even after his father's lack of success in business, local townspeople came to the families rescue by getting him a lifetime appointment as the treasurer of Monterey County. (National Steinbeck...
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