Context

• what was the Dust Bowl?

  Severe drought and dust storms during the 1930s.
• dust bowl migrants?

  loneliness - unemployment

  many travelled to California for work
• Soledad?

  town close to the ranch

  translates to solitude in Spanish - emphasising the men’s isolation
• what is a didactic?

  obvious lessons
• poem by Robert Burns context?

  mouse who prepared for winter and created a comfortable new home however farmer’s machinery destroyed it and froces mice to flee
• American dream?

  belief that anyone can achieve success and improve their lives through hard work
• Declaration of Independence 1776

  right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness‘

  steinbeck juxtaposes this
• Robert Burns poem , cyclical structure, dreams destroyed?

  ”The best laid plans of mice and men gang-aft a-gley”