Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
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Click here to view a study guide..Published: 1937
Literary Period: Modernist Novel Related Literary Works: John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie were perhaps the two most famous chroniclers of the Great Depression. Steinbeck's trilogy of novels portraying the struggle of migrant workers in California is the most enduring literary chronicle of the Great Depression: In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), and The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Woody Guthrie (1912–1967), the leading American songwriter of the late 1930s and 1940s, released the Dust Bowl Ballads in 1940, an album of songs inspired by the drought-ravaged region of the American West that came to be known as the "Dust Bowl" in the early 1930s. Related Historical Events: When the stock market crashed in 1929, an already awful situation for farmers and farm workers got considerably worse. Following World War I, crop prices plunged, forcing farmers to expand their farms and buy more equipment to make up for the shortfall. This situation was exacerbated when a severe drought crippled much of the American West. So when the market crashed, farmers could not pay back the debts they had built up in buying more land and equipment. As a result, many farmers and farm workers, migrated to California in hopes of finding enough work to live. |