3b. Steinbeck and the Social Conscience [Beyond Books

Hello, GUEST
Log in

"The low grades on my college stories were echoed in the rejection slips, in the hundreds of rejection slips." -John Steinbeck, "Advice for Beginning Writers"

Even while John Steinbeck wrote Nobel prize winning literature, residents of Salinas — the setting for many of his works — considered him a bad influence.

3b. Steinbeck and the Social Conscience

John Steinbeck immortalized the canning industry with his 1945 novel Cannery Row. The street was originally named Ocean View Avenue and renamed Cannery Row by the city of Monterey in 1958.

John Steinbeck never penned his autobiography. Nevertheless he revealed himself in 16 novels, a short story collection, many personal letters, two screenplays, and several nonfiction works. Some may not think of Steinbeck as a "Western writer," but in his best novels and short stories, he gave definition and voice to his unique experience of living, working and traveling in the American West.

Growin' Up

Born in the Salinas Valley of California, he used his boyhood home in Salinas and the more upper class Monterey Peninsula area as settings for Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, Cannery Row, and others. This California landscape informed his best works and influenced his unique characters and themes. "It's place that writes your books," observed Frederick Manfred, another Western writer. And this was certainly true of Steinbeck.

Steinbeck's early dedication to writing social protest may have come from his family's belief system. His county-treasurer father and schoolteacher mother narrated the lore of rural California to him. But if his mother's anecdotes and love of literature didn't inspire him enough, his own privileged circumstances may have. Steinbeck lived a life of middle-class comfort amidst the hard and often tragic lives of farmers, migrants, and ranchers in his native Salinas Valley.

Steinbeck was an eyewitness to poverty. He had real-life subjects for his attention and compassion.

Steinbeck's heart went out to these humble people. But he didn't pity them; he empathized. Steinbeck actually knew hard work. Boyhood jobs — fruit picker, ranch hand, bricklayer, and delivery boy — gave him a genuine appreciation for labor. As an adult, Steinbeck traveled extensively through the West from Oklahoma to California, experiencing first-hand the sad and frightening conditions of migrant workers. He lived in their camps, listened to their authentic stories and collected material for his writing.

Signs of the Times

John Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 "...for his realistic as well as imaginative writings, distinguished by a sympathetic humor and a keen social perception."

Steinbeck's social conscience — an awareness of the desperate plight of others — did not emerge in isolation. The author lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s. The economic collapse grew severest in the center of the country after a prolonged drought turned Oklahoma into a "Dust Bowl."

Images of starving farmers and migrant workers desperately searching for work were emblazoned in to the hearts of Americans. The poverty and desperation inspired an era of soul-searching that Steinbeck was happy to encourage. Against the setting of California, that symbol of infinite promise and dreams, Steinbeck contrasted the botched efforts of men and women to live in peace and dignity.

During the '30s, Steinbeck wrote what most consider his two enduring works: Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939). These novels are more than works of imagination; they are heartfelt revelations of the loneliness and desperation that many Americans felt. Steinbeck insisted that this pervasive hopelessness was a "crime here that goes beyond denunciation." He meant for his fiction to sound the alarm and provoke action.

Motivation and Inspiration

John Steinbeck drew inspiration from Salinas Valley's "pastures of heaven."

Were Steinbeck's motivations purely altruistic? Did he truly have an unselfish desire to relate to the ordinary person? Some critics argued that Steinbeck wrote for socialist idealism and propaganda, but others supported his passionate defense of the common man as authentic social conscience. "Like everyone," he said of his desire to write, "I want to be good and strong and virtuous and wide and loved." Still, he never wavered in his belief that literature should try to depict lives as they are really lived, regardless of politics or personal gain.

The questions are valid. Steinbeck's approach in his writing was almost exclusively naturalistic. But what does that mean?

"It is a fabulous place: when the tide is in, a wave-churned basin, creamy with foam, whipped by the combers that roll in from the whistling buoy on the reef. But when the tide goes out the little water world becomes quiet and lovely." -John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

Steinbeck was motivated to arouse sympathy for the poor people. He saw that they were often suffering cruelly in their environment and that the causes for their misery were frequently beyond their control. Steinbeck saw and wrote the lives of innocent victims. His writing implies that these unfortunates could just as easily have been well off in the materialistic American society had external circumstances been just a little different. Steinbeck expected readers to hate this suggestion because it would rob them of their own security. He was gratified when many agreed.

When he accepted a Nobel Prize in 1962, Steinbeck declared optimistically that literature was "our greatest hazard and our only hope." He believed that the power of writing and communication was in uniting people and helping them to overcome their most enduring troubles. Steinbeck sought "to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit." Through the courage, glory, and dignity of all his suffering characters, Steinbeck delivers a message to America.

Perhaps the words that Steinbeck placed in the mouth of one of his own characters best sums up his philosophy. Says the preacher in The Grapes of Wrath, "we got a job to do."

BACK | LINKS | NEXT

BEYOND BOOKS HOME ||| PROGRAMS ||| YOUR DESK ||| PORTFOLIOS ||| HELP

Call Toll Free 1-800-453-6227 • Fax 206-381-5601