After high school, he continued on to study literature at Stanford University. During his studies there he worked with underpaid manual laborers. He ended up dropping out of Stanford and joining the underpaid laborers for a job (Green). .
Prior to Steinbeck's life there was a lot of hate and discrimination going on in the world. There was racism and hatred toward African American people. and towards the Native American population. Steinbeck grew up learning and constantly hearing about these problems and events. These things influenced Steinbeck's writing through references to these problems throughout his literature (Tuttleton). During his life, Steinbeck lived through many historical events in both the world and the United States. He lived through three wars and was apart of one. He lived through World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War. Steinbeck was a war correspondent during World War II (Jones 78). He was in his 60's when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. His friend, the marine biologist, Ed Ricketts died during his lifetime and his death made Steinbeck, who had been living in New York at that time, move back to California (Schilling). Conjointly he was alive to see Theodore Roosevelt, the United States President, die. Steinbeck lived through three of the worst events to ever happen in United States history. First the massive stock market crash during 1920, which then lead to the second major event, The Great Depression. Steinbeck was in college during this time period which made it very difficult for him to afford college. Thirdly, he experienced the dustbowl in Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Kansas (Hamilton 35). Steinbeck lived through other tragedies too. He lived through the Hindenburg helium ship exploding and erupting in flames, and he lived through the horrific San Francisco earthquake (Hinds 66). Steinbeck lived in the time in which the German Nazi party gained huge popularity in parliament and Hitler was extremely popular and had gained massive power.
