e stayed away for two years and worked for a time on a ranch south of Salinas, which would become a model for the ranch in Of Mice and Men. He returned home and worked as a bench-chemist at the Spreckels beet factory and spent his free time writing. He returned to Stanford and was more successful. His main interest now was writing. He published his first novel in 1929--Cup of Gold (McCarthy 9-11).
Steinbeck wrote about the disaffected in California society, and his most successful and popular works depicted the humanity of the working class. He often showed the way what we today would call the Establishment tried to keep the working class down, as in In Dubious Battle where union organizers were beaten and killed, or The Grapes of Wrath where the state of California helped exploit workers fleeing the devastation in the Dust Bowl. In the era of the Great Depression, one of the problems affecting the country was the drought in the mid-West, and many people fled from its effects and sought a better life in California. The people who moved West in this migration were escaping from the heartland of America and seeking the American Dream in a new place, in the golden land of California:
The Depression forced many Americans to redefine their goals for the future--to imagine a life that would be meaningful in the face of lean material circumstances. They looked to former times for heritage that could offer guidance (Banks xxiv).
In The Grapes of Wrath, the Joads look to the one guiding li
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