... , rather than to judge the "correctness of his position regarding contemporary urgencies and controversies" (Tedlock 20). In George Snell's chapter on Steinbeck in The Shapers of American Fiction: 1798-1947, he notes Steinbeck's strengths and weaknesses: "an enormous gift of story-telling", "catholicity of sympathy" and "'common touch,'" ease of character creation through "types" rather than "individuals ... lurch from one self-inflicted crisis to another. Steinbeck uses that classic comic routine so that the reader warmly identifies and recognizes the relationship. Steinbeck's narrator e...

• Word Count: 2015
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... 1935. It was a collection of humorous short stories. In Dubious Battle was about a farm workers" strike in California. Two years later, one of his more successful and popular books, Of Mice and Men, was written. It was followed by The Long Valley, another collection of short stories, in 1938. The Grapes of Wrath, written in 1939, was perhaps Steinbeck's most famous novel, for which he ... only his grandfather ever really enters the story at any point. The story itself is about Adam Trask, who enters the story in chapter two. In chapter two, the point of view enters a more omniscient vie...

• Word Count: 1364
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

... creed. The love of earth plays a very important role in the novel. Steinbeck had dealt with this theme of man`s relationship to the land earlier - in `To a God Unknown` and `Of Mice and Men`. In these works the relationship is mystical, symbolic and mythical. These values persist in `The Grapes of Wreath`, the earth motive serves two main functions: first, to signify love ... the social background they serve to amplify the pattern of action created by the Joad family (for example, Chapter 1 describes the drought which forces the Joads off their land; Chapter 2 is a dialogue between two g...

• Word Count: 2399
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: High School