John Steinbeck Accomplishments

“A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone” - Paul Valery. John Steinbeck was one such man. A great author whose works carry great historical significance to this day. Despite undergoing several tragedies throughout his life, he overcame and continued to pursue his literary dreams. Only through hard work and dedication did he manage to concoct masterpieces such as The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden. Oftentimes the greatest minds come from the most unexpected sources. John Steinbeck was not born a rich man or a poor man. He came from an upper middle class family and had a fairly average childhood. His mother, Olive Hamilton, was a schoolteacher, and his father, John Ernst Steinbeck, was a manager at Sperry Flour Mill. He had three sisters, two older, named Esther and Beth, and one younger, named Mary. He was enamored by the fertility and prosperity which harbored his family within the Salinas valley. In fact, John Steinbeck’s childhood was so comfortable that at age four, his parents gifted him a pony. The situation was not all entirely impeccable, however, and the family soon lost most of their finances. Fortunately enough, they bounced back by his university years, and he was back on track to become a scholar without worry of his finances. Despite his entirely ordinary roots, Steinbeck later published the masterpieces which he is so lauded for today. Literature is similar to an inherited disease - in that it grips the mind at a younger age and influences one to his later years. …show more content…
Already known by his family as a young reader, at the age of nine he began reading about the travails of King Arthur and became instantly infatuated with the sheer imagination. He enjoyed imagining Camelot in his backyard and riding around on a prancing stallion. The small ranches in the Salinas valley were not exactly what an author needs, and “Respectable Salinas circumscribed the restless and imaginative young man” (Shillinglaw). When the time did come for him to grow up and move on to University, to appease his parents he attended Stanford. Although a clearly talented author, it seemed that graduating from university was not the right decision for him, and “Though he attended college off and on for six years, he left Stanford in 1925 without receiving a degree” (“John Steinbeck Biography”). These years were not all wasted, as he collected the knowledge which would later be needed to write and publish. John Steinbeck was no exception to this rule, and began writing to his heart’s content. Unfortunately for him, writing was not helping him with paying his bills, and he required work to do so. This work was at Spreckels Sugar at its various locations. From childhood to his 20s, Steinbeck was simply in love with writing, and would carry this passion for the rest of his life. An imperfect start is only one small obstacle in the path to greatness. Steinbeck’s start in life after college was particularly lackluster and he remembered it resentfully later in life. Before he began working as a caretaker at Tahoe Fish Hatchery, he moved to New York for a brief stint as a journalist and day laborer. The cramped and dirty environment scared him off, and he recalled “‘I had a thin, lonely, hungry time of it...And I remember too well the cockroaches under my wash basin and the impossibility of getting a job. I was scared thoroughly. And I can’t forget the scare’” (“John Steinbeck Biography”). Through this experience he learned the pain of living life without the freedom to choose. Fortunately enough, this marked a remarkable upswing in his life. In 1929 he published his first novel Cup of Gold. Shortly after, he met his soon to be first wife, Carol Henning. They moved to Los Angeles together and married on January 14, 1930. A few months later, they moved to Pacific Grove, and Carol worked several day jobs while Steinbeck worked on several works which he had in the pipeline. First he had Pastures of Heaven published in 1932. Following this he had To a God Unknown published in 1933. Although not badly written, these works simply did not sell. He finally found success with Tortilla Flat in 1935, a novel about