Analysis of John Steinbeck's Novels (3)

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John Steinbeck’s novels greatly reflect the nature of how people respond to certain situations and how aspects of the human condition are brought out. The human condition includes various emotions and responses that are showed due to situations in life. In The Moon is Down, Steinbeck uses characterization to touch on how the characters as a whole begin to change because of the conditions of war. In The Pearl, rather than using war, Steinbeck uses symbolism to show how people change based on changing from poor to wealthy. In To a God Unknown, Steinbeck uses symbolism to highlight the change in Joseph, a man who just bought his own farm and fell in love with the land. However, even though Steinbeck goes about each book in different ways, they all follow the same organized three step process to bring out a common theme. In these three books, Steinbeck goes about a three step process in order to bring out a major change in the character while showing aspects of the human condition along his journey. The first step is that a major change occurs in the character’s life. The second step is that the character is faced with a devastating problem as a result of this change. The third and final step is that the character comes to a realization about himself or life and shows aspects of the human condition. In John Steinbeck’s three novels, he establishes the common theme of how experience can bring out different emotions of the human condition, but he goes about it in different ways for each book. In the first step of The Moon is Down, Lieutenant Tonder is characterized as hopeful through the change of occupying an isolated town. When he arrived at the town they were occupying, Tonder said about the farms, “if four or five of them were thrown together, it would be a nice place to settle, I think” (Down 29), and this characterizes Tonder as being hopeful and

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