Part one of term paper
He didn't know it at the time, but John Steinbeck started getting ready to write The Grapes of Wrath when he was a small boy in California. Much of what he saw and heard while growing up found its way into the novel. On weekends his father took John and his three sisters on long drives out into the broad and beautiful valleys south of Sa ...

Part two of term paper
... weren't wealthy (John's father ran a flour mill), they lived in a comfortable Victorian house. John grew up on three square meals a day. He never doubted that he would always have enough of life's necessities. He even got a pony for his 12th birthday. (The pony became the subject of one of Steinbeck's earliest successes, his novel The Red Pony.) But don't think John was pampered; his family expected him to work. He delivered newspapers and did odd jobs around town. Family came first in the ...