John Steinbeck: The Chrysanthemums

John Steinbeck was born in 1902 in Salinas, California, the third of four siblings.

• Studied English at Stanford University
• Never earned his degree
• War correspondent
• WW II for the New York Herald Tribune
• Vietnam for the New York Daily News

Steinbeck published his first novel, Cup of Gold, in 1929

• fictionalized story of a seventeenth-century pirate
• not a critical or commercial hit.

His next novel, Tortilla Flat (1935), was much more successful

• turned into a film starring Spencer Tracy and Hedy Lamarr in 1942

Famous for his novels of California

• Salinas, California is sometimes referred to as Steinbeck Country
• best known of these California novels is Of Mice and Men (1937)
• George S. Kaufman worked with Steinbeck to turn the novel into a stage play - very successful
• made into a film in 1939

Same year that he published his most famous work,

• The Grapes of Wrath
• story of an impoverished family of farmers struggling to survive the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression
• won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize
• made into a film of the same name later that year

Steinbeck felt a great deal for the downtrodden, working class, and dregs of society.

Remember what theme means?

When you were young, your parents may have read you stories that ended with “the moral of this story is…”

That moral was a message that you could glean from the overall story. A theme isn’t something that's stated outright; it often appears as a lesson or message that the reader understands by reading between the lines.

Recurring elements (representing a subject, theme or idea) that help establish mood are called a "motif."

Example:

A man becoming parched and dehydrated in the desert

• Cracked creek beds, and the sun shimmering through heat waves

Crime in a violent city

• Constant sirens in the background and screeching tires
• TV reports with violence statistics

Generally independent of the characters

• characters don't create them
• may respond to them

Generally are repeating elements used to create the same mood over and over

• can be created by the display of patterns which might be visual
• could also be behavioral, ideas or themes, auditory, or objects

Symbols seem, at first glance, like the least important thing in the world. But a symbol is described as participating in what it represents (Paul Tillich). That is true in some very practical ways.

• father "retired" from his industrial job
• began running his own business
• took his old aluminum lunch box and threw it in the trash
• Putting that lunch box in the trash symbolized that he had finished with that way of life.

A symbol gives us information. It represents something.

• a cross will convey a world of meaning to a Christian
• peace symbol and the acronym VC will mean certain things to a Vietnam veteran
• IRS means headache for most of us
• The blindfolded woman holding a scales, the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, the Statue of Liberty - all convey information.

That tells us two things about symbols.

• One, the symbol was an integral part of his life: it participated in it.
• Two, others don’t necessarily understand the symbol unless it is set up for them.

If a child (and some adults) wants to hurt another child

• learns that a poke in the eye will get them in trouble
• Break their doll, kick their dog, tell lies to get them in trouble
• things represent the person - they are symbols of them

The symbols and motifs you discover in your reading will lead to the understanding of an overall theme.

Literature is an art, and the beauty of art is that it can be interpreted differently by everyone.

The Chrysanthemums

Pulitzer Prize

John Steinbeck

motif

Elisa

symbolism

Presidential Medal of Freedom

tinker

Salinas

http://www.miettecast.com/audio/Miette_Steinbeck.mp3

sexuality

The Grapes of Wrath

Summary

1. A symbol is an object, a picture, a written word, or a sound that is used to represent something. A motif is an image, spoken or written word, sound, act, or another visual or structural device that is used to develop a theme.

2. A symbol can be repeated once or twice, while a motif is constantly repeated.

3. A symbol can help in the understanding of an idea or thing, while a motif can help indicate what the literary work or piece is all about.

4. The meaning of a symbol depends on its history and purpose while the meaning of a motif depends on how it is being used in a certain literary work.

Symbols

Motif

John Steinbeck