John steinbeck biography the red pony

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The Red Pony, written by John Steinbeck, is a story about a boy named Jody that is divided into four sections; The Gift, The Great Mountains, The Promise, and The Leader of the People. Jody's father is Carl Tiflin, who owns a ranch with only one employee, Billy Buck. The ranch is the setting of each of the four stories, with cows, horses, and pigs. Jody's father is quite stern and doesn't show much outright affection, but Billy is more emotional and spends time teaching Jody about the caring of the farm.

The first story, The Gift, centers around the horse the Jody named Gabilan that was given to him by his father. Jody clearly loves the horse and spends most of his free time brushing it, washing it, and training it. Soon enough, Jody thinks that the horse is ready to be ridden - but disaster strikes. Gabilan caught a severe cold from being out in the rain, even though Billy had made the promise that Gabilan was too strong to get sick. Billy, overwhelmed with the dilemma, has to resort to drastic measures, resolving in the horse's throat being cut open to insert a breathing hold. However, the problems are not over yet. Gabilan escapes the ranch one night, and, to much dismay, Jody finds the horse's body being fed on by vultures the next morning.

The next story, The Great Mountains, is about a visitor to the ranch named Gitano. Gitano is an old Mexican man that came to the Tiflin family, claiming that he was born and raised on the farm. His last wish is to remain on the farm until he dies, but the stern Carl Tiflin refuses, leaving the man without his hopes. That same night, however, in defiance of his father, Jody sneaks off to meet Gitano. He sees him polishing a sword, and asks Gitano if he ha

American writer (1902–1968)

"Steinbeck" redirects here. For other people with this surname, see Steinbeck (surname).

John Ernst Steinbeck (STYNE-bek; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception". He has been called "a giant of American letters."

During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multigeneration epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas The Red Pony (1933) and Of Mice and Men (1937). The Pulitzer Prize–winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. By the 75th anniversary of its publishing date, it had sold 14 million copies.

Much of Steinbeck's work employs settings in his native central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everymanprotagonists.

Early life

Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California. He was of German, English, and Irish descent. Johann Adolf Großsteinbeck (1828–1913), Steinbeck's paternal grandfather, was a founder of Mount Hope, a short-lived farming colony in Palestine that disbanded after Arab attackers killed his brother and raped his brother's wife and mother-in-law. He arrived in the United States in 1858, shortening the family name to Steinbeck. The family farm in Heiligenhaus, Mettmann, Germany, is still named "Großsteinbeck".

His fat

John Steinbeck
1937

Introduction

John Steinbeck's The Red Pony—which some critics believe represents one of Steinbeck's best works—is divided into four separate sections, unlike standard chapters. The sections are held together by common characters, location, and themes, and they follow a similar time line, but the continuation of story line is not as smooth as the transition between normal chapters of a novel. They all follow the trials of Jody Tiflin, however, as he progresses through the rites of passage from young boy to young man.

It is through the red pony, which Jody receives as a gift from his father, that he learns about death. This is a painful experience for a shy young boy who is so proud of his pony that he invites friends home from school just to look at the small horse. Likewise, it is through other animals that populate this book that Jody also learns about sex, old age, sickness, and birth. He is gently guided through his journey from boy to man with the help of a ranch hand named Billy Buck, who is reputed to know more about horses than any man around. However, even Billy cannot defy nature and must learn that he cannot make promises that he cannot keep. Through Billy and Jody's mother, Jody learns compassion and understanding. Jody's father is not as open to other people, but Steinbeck takes care not to depict Jody's father as a villain. Steinbeck treats all his characters fairly and fleshes out their personalities to their fullest extent possible within the confines of his stories.

Three of the sections of this novel were published separately before being collected in the book The Red Pony. The first two, "The Gift" and "The Great Mountains," were published in the North American Review in 1933, and the third, "The Promise," appeared in Harper's in 1937.

Author Biography

John Stei

“Exploring The Red Pony”
by Dr. Susan Shillinglaw, San Jose State University

The Red Pony was written at a time of profound anxiety caused by the incapacitating illness of Steinbeck’s mother. Steinbeck started writing the story while tending her in the hospital, thus testing his ability to focus and create under any circumstances. As he writes in a 1933 letter: “[…] if I can write any kind of story at a time like this, then I can write stories”(A Life in Letters).

The first two stories of The Red Pony, “The Gift” and “The Great Mountains,” were published in The North American Review in 1933, and were quite successful. He wrote the last two stories, “The Promise” and “The Leader of the People” in 1934, but the four stories would not be published together until 1945, when they were included in Steinbeck’s short story collection The Long Valley.

Steinbeck’s own life came to be a source of inspiration for The Red Pony. The Tifflin Ranch was modeled after the ranch of the Hamiltons, Steinbeck’s relatives on his mother’s side, Carl Tifflin’s relationship with his son Jody echoed some of Steinbeck’s own childhood frustrations, and even the red pony had a real life counterpart, the Shetland pony Steinbeck received when he was four years old. But the story does more than to capture familiar people and events. Its function becomes cathartic, in that it allows the writer to deal with his own sense of loss and pain, to come to terms with his own inevitable passage into adulthood.

The Red Pony is a story written from a child’s perspective, the eyes through which we see the events unfold are Jody’s, Steinbeck’s intention being “[…] to make the reader create the boy’s mind for himself”(A Life in Letters). Thus the prose becomes participatory, a technique he will use in mature novels like The Grapes of Wrath(1939) and East of Eden(1952). Even though the four stories do not se