Uzbekistan state university of world languages english philology faculty

UZBEKISTAN STATE UNIVERSITY OF WORLD LANGUAGES


ENGLISH PHILOLOGY FACULTY
Course Paper


Theme: PROBLEMS OF FARMERS DEPICTED IN JOHN STEINBECK’S WORKS

Group: FING-1808
Name of the student:
Jamolova Dilnoza

Scientific advisor:
Mansurxo'jayeva Madina


Toshkent 2022

Problems of farmers depicted in John Steinbeck’s works
CONTENTS:

	Pages
INTRODUCTION	3
MAIN PART
1. Steinbeck’s politics	5
2. Background influences	14
3. Romanticizing certain characters	18
4. Real vs Fantasy	22
CONCLUSION	26
REFERENCES	28

Introduction

The Great Depression affected countries around the world during the 1930s to 1940s with its worst cases mostly being felt in North America and Europe. The era created harsh living conditions for the working class who found it difficult to earn enough money to survive. These difficult times became major focus points for many authors around the world, but amongst American novelists John Steinbeck perhaps stands out as best representing the harsh ordeals of the ordinary working folk during this period.
Steinbeck, who grew up in the Salina’s Valley region of California, wrote several novels that focused on both the economic and the personal hardships of the Great Depression. The most popular of these works take place around his childhood home. His novels often praised nature and were immensely important during the Great Depression as they helped influence the lives of ordinary people, and in the process they paved the way for future artists. His tales have clear moral aspects which are not only relevant to his time, but also perhaps for our own which suddenly seems to have so much in common with the 1920s and 30s.
It has been claimed that John Steinbeck did not intend his stories to be vehicles for his political views, and that he only wanted was to tell stories. Others maintain that it was because of his sudden realization of how severe the economic climate was that he decided to apply it to his novels. Whatever his reasons may have been, his novels exhibit clear images of life during these times of struggle for the working class. In them, we are faced with the battles these characters must fight every day and we are introduced to different social levels through the characters. These characters go through life with their own problems and worries, and their battles closely resembled those of the working class.
John Steinbeck’s novels give us a glimpse of the lifestyle and conditions which the American public was forced to endure, while those who were higher on the social scale were the ones who lived the so called “American Dream”. The Great Depression affected each class in a different way and the differences can be seen through the characters in the novels. The living conditions of the average working man was brutal, but the way he romanticized the nature in his novels worked as a contrast between the real and the fantasy, and the characters often had to rely on being able to escape the real world and enter the fantasy one. It was with that action that Steinbeck used his characters to try to make a difference in the society.