1. Of Mice and Men By: John Steinbeck A novel of loneliness, loss, friendship, and the search for a better life.

2. John Steinbeck

3. “In every bit of honest writing in the world there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other, you will be kind to each other. Knowing man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means—many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. To try and understand each other.” –Steinbeck 1938

4. John Steinbeck – Born in 1902 in Salinas, California, a region that was the setting for most of his books including Of Mice and Men. – As a teenager he spent his summers working on ranches. These experiences gave him an admiration for the people of rural California. – He wrote about everyday people; farmers, migrant workers, hobos who are just trying to get by during a difficult time in American history – Commercial writing success did not come until his famous works during The Great Depression like Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, and Tortilla Flat. – He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and Nobel Prize for literature in 1962.

5. The Great Depression – Spanning from the stock market crash in 1929 to 1939. This was the longest- lasting economic downturn in the history of the United States. – The Depression is said to be caused by consumers overspending on credit and economic instability stemming from the stock market. – Millions of people were out of work and faced extreme economic hardships. – During this time, droughts and dust storms swept the Great Plains, destroying crops and turning fertile areas into a desert-like region that became known as the Dust Bowl. – Many migrant workers traveled from states like Oklahoma and Kansas to California in order to find work because of the destroyed crops from the mid- west.

6. Some of Steinbeck’s Themes in Of Mice and Men – Loneliness and Isolation – Friendship – Dreams – Difficulty of Obtaining the American Dream – Migrant Workers and Homelessness – Oppression between rich and poor, whites and blacks, and those who suffer from mental illness.

7. George and Lennie – We first meet our main characters when they arrive in California a few miles from the farm they are due to start working at. – They are friends who share a dream of owning their own farmland. – George is the leader of the two, while Lennie, who is fiercely devoted to him, suffers from a mild mental illness.

8. Naturalism & Realism – Naturalism is a literary genre that started as a literary movement in late nineteenth century in literature, film, theater and art. It is a type of extreme realism. This movement suggested the role of family background, social conditions and environment in shaping human character. – Naturalism and realism both strive to show the world in an honest, straightforward way, as opposed to romanticism which was full of supernatural events and high emotion. Naturalistic and realistic writers strip away everything artificial and express the world as it really is.