Of Mice and Men English Ca

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Essay topic: Explore the way family relationships are presented in “Of Mice and Men” CA John Steinbeck was born in 1902, in California in Salinas’s valley which would serve as the setting for his novella ‘Of Mice and men’. He went to Stanford University but never graduated. He went to New York in 1925, where he tried for a few years to establish himself as a free-lance writer and where he took odd jobs. He failed to have any of his work published so he returned to California. He was most known for his novel’s ‘East is Eden’ (1952) and ‘the Grape of Wrath’ (1939), which he won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Steinbeck was also a Nobel Peace prize winner; winning the award for literature in 1962. He died in 1968 in New York. Of Mice and Men is based on a ranch in Salinas valley primarily. It tells the story of Lennie Smalls a mentally challenged man, with a big-strong muscular stature, and that of George Milton an intelligent- smaller yet cynical man. The two migrant field workers look for work on a ranch in California due to the events of ‘the great depression’ in the 1930’s. This took place towards the end of an American era known as ‘the roaring twenties’. This was a decade when America though it’s self to be powerful, successful and wealthy. However this was mainly a facade. The gap between the rich and poor was very large. In October 1929 share prices fell in New York drastically, as people thought it was a quick and easy way to get rich. But in actual fact it was just a mirage. 26 billion dollars was estimated to have been lost. Many banks and businesses went bust, pulling the country into a recession. George and Lennie have an almost brotherly relationship, with George becoming a guardian as he promised Lennie’s Aunt Clara he’d looks after him as a brother/surrogate-dad. He becomes an intellectual guardian for Lennie and Lennie becomes George’s physical
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