In the fall of 1937, while returning from New York and Pennsylvania, where he had worked on the stage version of Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck drove through Oklahoma, joined migrants who were going west, and worked with them in the fields after they reached California. The Grapes of Wrath is thus a product of his own experience and direct observation; its realism is genuine. (p. 68) [The] story ends in medias res. Some readers have objected to the closing scene, in which the young mother who lost her child suc...

Of Mice and Men is a short novel in six scenes presented in description-dialogue-action form that approximates stage drama in its effect…. The time scheme runs from Thursday evening through Sunday evening—exactly three days in sequence, a matter of some importance, as we shall see presently. The setting is the Salinas Valley in California, and most of the characters are unskilled migratory workers who drift about the villages and ranches of that area picking up odd jobs or doing short-term fie...

A minor classic of proletarian conflict, Of Mice and Men was written in 1937, first as a novel, then as a play…. The sycamore grove by the Salinas River, so lovingly described in the opening lines, is more than scene-setting: it is an attempt to evoke the sense of freedom in nature which, for a moment only, the protagonists will enjoy. By a path worn hard by boys and hobos two migrant laborers appear. The first man is mouse-like…. He is the planner from the poem by Robert Burns: as with other ...

The weeds and the willows and the tall waving grain of California's sweet valleys, rabbits and mice and a woman's soft hair, the hot slanting sun and the hungry desire of a pair of floaters to own a handful of dirt are the materials out of which this lovely new novel by John Steinbeck is evoked. Purling water is purling water here, without overtones; a gracious sky is as beautiful as in any lyric poetry. The men are lads sent down to the ranch from Murray and Ready's in San Francisco: L...