lo: to know and understand the social and …...lo: to know and understand the social and historical...

LO: To know and understand the social and historical context of the novel (Of Mice and Men).

Choose your starter:1) List all the words you

would associate with this image (e.g. desolate, sparse).

2) Imagine you are a character in the scene. Write a short passage about what you can see.

3) When and where do you think this photograph was taken? Explain your reasons.

LO: To know and understand the social and historical contextof the novel (Of Mice and Men).

Stick this image in your books:

I will read information about John Steinbeck – note down as much information as possible around the image in your book.


John Steinbeck biography• He wrote the book ‘ Of Mice and Men’ in 1936• He came from Salinas, California• Like ‘Of Mice and Men’ many of his books deal with the lives and problems of working people.• Many of his characters in his books are immigrants who went to California looking for work or

a better life.• Steinbeck worked on a ranch when he was 19, and used his experiences in ‘Of Mice and Men’.• The living conditions for the farm workers were very poor.• Often men travelled alone but sometimes whole families had to move and all live in their car. • Steinbeck's novels can all be classified as social novels dealing with the economic problems

of rural labour. They tend to focus on trials and tribulations people experience and often make the reader root for the underdog.

• In 1962, Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for literature for his “realistic and imaginative writing, combining as it does sympathetic humor and keen social perception.” Both The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men won Pulitzer Prizes. They both focused on the plights of poor migrant workers searching for hope and the American Dream.


While we watch the following clips, mind-map all the key words that you hear:

Watch Me

ContextKey Words

immigrant worker

California

http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/john-steinbecks-of-mice-and-men-historical-context-pt-1-4/8168.html


• The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success.

• In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" regardless of social class or circumstances of birth.

• The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the United States Declaration of Independence which proclaims that "all men are created equal" and that they are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights" including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.“

(Wikepedia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Statueofliberty.JPG



DATE DESCRIPTION

1848 Californian Gold Rush: discovery of gold in California sparks a major wave of migration from the east of the USA (and

Europe) to California on the west coast. One of the towns created as a result of the Gold Rush was Auburn.

1850-

1914

Period of mass immigration into the USA from abroad (c.40 million people), especially from Europe. People came for

many reasons but in particular to escape poverty and/or political oppression. America was seen as ‘the home of the

free’ and a land of opportunity where hard work will bring success. Many dreamt of owning and farming their own land.

9.9.1850 California is declared to be the 31st state in the United States of America

1862 Pacific Railway Act opens the way for the building of the Transcontinental Railway, connecting the east and west Coasts

via the interior and providing relatively rapid and cheap transport for goods and people across the United States

1865

The emancipation (freeing) of the slaves and the abolition of slavery following the American Civil War (1863-1865).

Many freed slaves moved from the southern states to the northern cities but some went west where they became

‘sharecroppers’: farmers who were allowed to farm part of someone else’s land in return for paying a share of their

crops to the landowner.




1902

February 27th: John Steinbeck born in Salinas, California. This was an intensive

agricultural (farming) area of California with Salinas and Soledad both being

important towns. By 1902 there was a large sugar beet industry and after the First

World War the expansion of irrigation projects (bringing water to the land rather

than just relying on rainfall and existing rivers) meant that during the 1920s the

area of the Salinas Valley became the ‘salad bowl’ of America, with lettuce (Green

Gold), broccoli and artichokes forming the major crops. These crops provided jobs

for a large number of temporary workers. However, there are still ranches growing

wheat, cattle and sheep with which Steinbeck would be familiar.

1914-1918

The First World War: America entered the war in 1917 with over 2 million men

going to fight in Europe (although many arrived too late to see much, if any, actual

fighting). Troops returning to the USA brought back German army Luger pistols as

prize souvenirs.

The war was beneficial for American agriculture and industry as they exported

food, industrial goods and munitions to Europe.


1917

Russian Revolution – raises fears of communism in the USA (communism = the violent

overthrow of the upper classes by the working class).

Marcus Garvey starts the first branch of The Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation

Association (UNIA) in the United States. This is an organisation devoted to improving the status

of black people. It is one of a number of such organisations including the National Association

for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) which was founded in 1909. Racial

segregation (black people being prevented from mixing with white people in public places such

as schools, hospitals and parks) was enforced by laws in many states. Such laws are often

referred to as ‘Jim Crow’ laws.

1919

Prohibition starts in the USA – the sale and consumption of alcoholic drinks (all drinks more than

5% proof) is banned throughout the United States of America.

There are race riots against black people in 23 cities across the USA.

The government cracks down on those suspected of being Communists (or ‘un-American’) –

especially trades unionists and immigrants from countries thought to have links to communism.

Strikes are put down by the government which does not see them as concerned with poverty and

employment but as a threat to the American way of life.


Read this extract from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was first published in 1925, twelve years before Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. The novel is set in New York during the Roaring Twenties.

…The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names.The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key lighter. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices with colour under the constantly changing light.Suddenly one of these gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the Follies. The party has begun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=684n8

FO68LU


The Roaring Twenties / the Jazz Age:

PROSPERITY

For many people in America (especially the cities such as New York and Chicago) the 1920s are years of

considerable prosperity. American goods are protected from competition with imports by high tariffs (customs

duties) and Americans are encouraged to buy American produced consumer products such as cars, washing

machines, refrigerators and radios. Henry Ford pioneers the use of the ‘production line’ in his car factories and by

1928 him ‘Model T’ Ford costs only $295, down from $1200 in 1909, and he has sold over 15 million of them. The

increase in car ownership leads to an increase in road building, bringing with it an increase in the number of trucks

and buses.

It becomes much easier to borrow money to purchase goods, for example through the new ‘hire-purchase’

schemes– getting the goods immediately but paying for them by instalments. People also borrow money to buy

shares in American companies. By 1929 it is possible to borrow 90% of the money needed to buy shares: the idea

is that the share price goes up, the owner then sells and pays back the money borrowed to buy the shares out of

the money he gets on sale. This only works if the share price continues to rise. However, the ‘consumer boom’

meant that the profits of American companies rise dramatically and therefore so do the value of their shares.

Share prices also go up because more and more people want to buy them.


WomenWomen start to play a growing role in the American economy, both as consumers and workers. Between 1920 and 1929 the number of working women over the age of 15 increases by 50% to c.10 million (25% of the female population over 15). However, women’s wages are usually considerably lower than those of men, even where they were doing the same or similar jobs. Women are subject to criticism for the way they dress and act as skirts and hair get shorter, cosmetics got cheaper and women become more economically independent. Women drive and smoke. Fashionable clothes become cheaper and easier to obtain with a massive increase in chain stores throughout the USA.


The Roaring Twenties?The consumer goods boom does not affect all people equally. By 1929 over 50% of Americans earn less than $2000 a year, with 40% below the poverty line. Black and immigrant workers are particularly likely to be affected by low wages and unemployment. Farming families are far less likely to enjoy the consumer boom as many rural areas still have no electricity and small farm incomes drop dramatically as the price of wheat falls. In 1920 wheat costs $183 a bushel (a measure of wheat). By 1929 it is 38¢. a bushel. By 1929 farm incomes are roughly 40% of the national average. During the boom times of the 1920s c.1 million black farm workers lose their jobs. However, in California, which has a more industrialised form of farming with less small farms, farmers do better.


• The Wall Street Crash (Saturday 19th October – massive profit taking (selling shares at a high price to get the maximum amount of profit), leading to fall in share prices and more panic selling on Sunday 20th as people start to worry they will lose money.

• Those who can afford it buy shares as the price drops (often borrowing money to do so) and this means prices rise on Monday / Tuesday as demand grows again.

• Wednesday 23rd – again there is mass selling at the very end of the day (shares are only bought and sold during defined period of hours) followed by panic on Thursday 24th – everyone trying to sell but there are no buyers.

• To try and stop the panic the banks try to support the share market by using their money (i.e. the money belonging to their customers) to buy shares and keep the price up on Friday 25th.

• Monday 28th: more massive selling again and the banks don’t step in to buy. This continues on 29th

but there are no buyers so prices fall and then fall further AND the buying / selling technology collapses preventing many even trying to sell shares which are now worthless.

• This leaves many speculators (those who bought hoping to make a quick profit) ruined as they borrowed money to buy shares expecting them to rise in value. The shares are worth nothing and they can’t repay what they borrowed.

• The banks that lent them the money can’t get it back and start to go broke. Many American companies are now worthless.


The 1930s: the Great Depression• Following on from the Wall Street crash, but not entirely caused by it, there is a major economic

depression in America and elsewhere. • The 1930s are years of mass unemployment, particularly in agriculture (with small farmers suffering

particularly badly and losing their land when they are unable to repay the money they borrowed to buy it) and the traditional ‘heavy’ industries of coal, iron and steel.

• Many businesses, including several thousand banks, go bust. There is a cycle of depression: as one company goes bust and its workers become unemployed, it causes other businesses - that relied on that company or its workers for its income - to go bust.

• When banks go bust those who have deposited their savings in that bank lose them. This starts another cycle as savers in other banks try to withdraw their savings, causing those banks to collapse.

• There is nothing like unemployment benefit or housing benefit, and no free national health system (some people had private health insurance, which increased during the 1930s). If you lose your job, you often lose your home and the whole family ends up on the streets. Many such families end up in living in cardboard shantytowns which become known as ‘Hoovervilles’.

• During the 1930s more women enter the workforce: but that is because they are much cheaper than men, with their average wage being 50% that of the average male wage.

• As an antidote to the depression popular entertainment, especially the movies, continues to grow. Going to the movies provides people with a short period when they could forget their troubles.


1930

The Hawley-Smoot Act is passed raising tariffs (customs duties) on imported goods to an all time high. Other

countries react by imposing similar duties on American goods, including imports of American wheat, which

had been a major export for America during the First World War and the early 1920s. The surplus wheat

can’t be sold at home because the depression means that many people are struggling even to buy food. This

helps to produce a major depression in farming as surplus wheat stocks build up and prices drop

dramatically. Small farmers and ‘sharecroppers’ are hardest hit. Tenant farmers can’t pay their rent and

farmers who bought land can’t pay back the loans they took out to buy it. They are evicted.

This is the first of the drought years in the south and mid-west of the USA, adding to farmers’ problems.

1932

In 1932 20% of small farmers lost their farms as a result of being unable to repay their loans because of the

decrease in prices for agricultural goods.

The ‘Hobo’ becomes a figure of American legend: in 1932 about 2 million unemployed, including farmers who

have lost their land, are travelling the railroads looking for work.

1934

Following a long period of drought (exceptionally dry weather) the mid-West (especially Oklahoma and

Arkansas) are hit by dust clouds as the thin, dry soil is blown away: these areas become known as ‘The Dust

Bowl’. Many farmers are forced to abandon their land, with approximately 350,000 – 400,000 passing over the

Rocky Mountain ranges to the west, especially California, to seek work there.

1937 Of Mice and Men is published. Steinbeck finished writing it in 1936, just before the lettuce strike. Set near

Soledad in the Salinas Valley where Steinbeck was born.

1939 Steinbeck publishes The Grapes of Wrath. In this book he deals with migrants from the Dust Bowl who go to

work in the vineyards of California. He also describes ‘Hoovervilles’.


1900

1910

1920

1930

1940

Plot these events on your own timeline:

February 27th 1902 –John Steinbeck was

born.

The Roaring Twenties29th October 1929 – The Wall Street Crash

1930s: The Great Depression

1932: 2 million unemployed

1937: Of Mice and Menis published.


Know the following context to incorporate into your analysis of the book and Steinbeck’s choices:• The American Dream• The Roaring Twenties• The Wall Street Crash• The Great Depression• The Dustbowl• Migrant Workers in 1930s USA• The Life and Times of John Steinbeck


Look at these front covers.1. Write a list or words that you would associate with the images displayed

on the front covers.2. Make a prediction about what the novel will be about.3. Justify your decision with examples from the front covers.

John Steinbeck’s title – Of Mice and Men – is taken from a poem by Scottish poet Robert Burns who wrote a poem called “To a Mouse”.


The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men

Gang aft agley,

An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,

For promis'd joy!

The best laid schemes of mice and men

Go often askew,

And leave us nothing but grief and pain,

For promised joy!

Write a sentence predicting what will happen in the story. I think that the characters will…

Justify your comment by using evidence from the poem.

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