Mice and Men
Jaycie Fetter and Judith Malone
The Great Depression
Over the next several years, consumer spending and investment dropped, causing steep declines in industrial output and rising levels of unemployment as failing companies laid off workers. By 1933 around 13 to 15 million americans were unemployed and around 50% of America's banks had failed. President Franklin D. Roosevelt helped lessen the worst effects of the Great Depression in the 1930's but the economy did not turn around until after 1939, when World War II kicked American industry into high gear.
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The American Dream
The old American Dream ... was the dream of the Puritans, of Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard"... of men and women content to accumulate their modest fortunes a little at a time, year by year by year. The new dream was the dream of instant wealth, won in a twinkling by audacity and good luck. [This] golden dream ... became a prominent part of the American psyche only after Sutter's Mill.
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John Steinbeck (biggest literary works and themes)
Steinbeck’s first play was Of Mice and Men. He went on to write more plays such as The Moon is Down and Burning Bright, but the bestselling book of 1939 was the Grapes of Wrath. John used two years of research to write that book. It was a controversial novel about migrant workers. It uses sympathy for them and makes it seem like farmers are selfish and greedy.
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