John Steinbeck in the context of Tide pools

In contemporary literary studies, a theme is a main topic, subject, or message within a narrative. Themes are ideas that are central to a story, which can often be summed in a single abstract noun (for example, love, death, betrayal, nostalgia, or parenthood) or noun phrase (for example, coming of age, humans in conflict with technology, seeking spirituality in the modern era, or the dangers of unchecked ambition). A theme may be exemplified by the actions, utterances, or thoughts of characters, as in the theme of loneliness in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, wherein many of the characters seem isolated and long for community with others. It may or may not differ from the thesis—the text's or author's implied worldview.

A story may have several themes and generally longer works, such as novels, plays, films, or television series, do. Themes often explore historically common or cross-culturally recognizable ideas, such as ethical questions, and are usually implied rather than stated explicitly. An example of this would be whether one should live a seemingly better life, at the price of giving up parts of one's humanity, which is a theme in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Along with plot, character, setting, and style, theme is considered one of the components of fiction. Themes can be divided into two categories: a work's thematic concept is what readers "think the work is about" and its thematic statement being "what the work says about the subject".

Of Mice and Men is a 1937 novella written by American author John Steinbeck. It describes the experiences of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers, as they move from place to place in California, searching for jobs during the Great Depression.

Steinbeck based the novella on his own experiences as a teenager working alongside migrant farm workers in the 1910s, before the arrival of the Okies whom he would describe in his novel The Grapes of Wrath. The title is taken from Robert Burns' poem "To a Mouse": "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley" ("The best-laid plans of mice and men / Often go awry").

A grave is a location where a dead body (typically that of a human, although sometimes that of an animal) is buried or interred after a funeral. Graves are usually located in special areas set aside for the purpose of burial, such as graveyards or cemeteries.

In some religions, it is believed that the body must be burned or cremated for the soul to survive; in others, the complete decomposition of the body is considered to be important for the rest of the soul (see bereavement).

A tide pool or rock pool is a shallow pool of seawater that forms on the rocky intertidal shore. These pools typically range from a few inches to a few feet deep and a few feet across. Many of these pools exist as separate bodies of water only at low tide, as seawater gets trapped when the tide recedes. Tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and moon. A tidal cycle is usually about 25 hours and consists of two high tides and two low tides.

Tide pool habitats are home to especially adaptable animals, like snails, barnacles, mussels, anemones, urchins, sea stars, crustaceans, octopus, and small fish, as well as seaweed. Inhabitants must be able to cope with constantly changing water levels, water temperatures, salinity, and oxygen content. At low tide, there is the risk of predators like seabirds. These pools have engaged the attention of naturalists and marine biologists, as well as philosophical essayists: John Steinbeck wrote in The Log from the Sea of Cortez, "It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool."

The 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the American author John Steinbeck (1902–1968) "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception."

Edward Flanders Robb Ricketts (May 14, 1897 – May 11, 1948) was an American marine biologist, ecologist, and philosopher. Renowned as the inspiration for the character Doc in John Steinbeck's 1945 novel Cannery Row, Rickett's professional reputation is rooted in Between Pacific Tides (1939), a pioneering study of intertidal ecology. A friend and mentor of Steinbeck, they collaborated on and co-authored the book, Sea of Cortez (1941).

Eleven years later, and just three years after the death of Ed Ricketts, John Steinbeck reprinted the narrative portion of their coauthored book with a new publisher, with Steinbeck removing Ricketts as coauthor, adding a biography of Ed Ricketts and re-titling the book The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1946). Steinbeck also added a eulogy for Ricketts, but it was met with public backlash.

Tortilla Flat (1935) is an early John Steinbeck novel set in Monterey, California. The novel was the author's first clear critical and commercial success.

The book portrays a group of 'paisanos'—literally, countrymen—a small band of errant friends enjoying life and wine in the days after the end of World War I.

Cannery Row is a novel by American author John Steinbeck, published in 1945. It is set during the Great Depression in Monterey, California, on a street lined with sardine canneries that is known as Cannery Row. The story revolves around the people living there: Lee Chong, the local grocer; Doc, a marine biologist; and Mack, the leader of a group of derelict people. The Monterey location Steinbeck was writing about, on Ocean View Avenue, had been informally called "Cannery Row" since World War I. The street was formally renamed "Cannery Row" in 1958 in honor of Steinbeck. A film version was released in 1982 and a stage version was produced in 1995.

East of Eden is a 1952 family saga novel by American author and Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck. Many regard the work as Steinbeck's most ambitious novel, and Steinbeck himself considered it his magnum opus. Steinbeck said of East of Eden, "It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years"; the author later said, "I think everything else I have written has been, in a sense, practice for this." Steinbeck originally addressed the novel to his young sons, Thom and John (then 61⁄2 and 41⁄2 years old, respectively). Steinbeck wanted to describe the sights, sounds, smells, and colors of the Salinas Valley for them in detail.

East of Eden brings to life the intricate details of two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, and their interwoven stories. The Hamilton family in the novel is said to be based on the real-life family of Samuel Hamilton, Steinbeck's maternal grandfather. A young John Steinbeck also appears briefly in the novel as a minor character.

The Red Pony is an episodic novella written by American writer John Steinbeck in 1933. The first three chapters were published in magazines from 1933 to 1936. The full book was published in 1937 by Covici Friede. The stories in the book are tales of a boy named Jody Tiflin. The book has four stories about Jody and his life on his father's California ranch. Other main characters include Carl Tiflin – Jody's father; Billy Buck – an expert in horses and a working hand on the ranch; Mrs. Tiflin – Jody's mother; Jody's grandfather – Mrs. Tiflin's father, who has a history of crossing the Oregon Trail, and enjoys telling stories about his experiences; and Gitano – an old man who wishes to die at the Tiflin ranch. Along with these stories, there is a short story (taken from one of Steinbeck's earlier works, The Pastures of Heaven) at the end of the book titled "Junius Maltby". However, this last story is omitted in the edition published by Penguin Books.

The Grapes of Wrath is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The book won the National Book Awardand Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962.

Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, agricultural industry changes, and bank foreclosures forcing tenant farmers out of work. Due to their nearly hopeless situation, and in part because they are trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California on the "mother road", along with thousands of other "Okies" seeking jobs, land, dignity, and a future.

The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of natural factors (severe drought) and human-made factors: a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion, most notably the destruction of the natural topsoil by settlers in the region. The drought came in three waves: 1934, 1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the High Plains experienced drought conditions for as long as eight years. It exacerbated an already existing agricultural recession.

The Dust Bowl has been the subject of many cultural works, including John Steinbeck's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath; the Dust Bowl Ballads of Woody Guthrie; and Dorothea Lange's photographs depicting the conditions of migrants, particularly Migrant Mother, taken in 1936.

U.S. Route 66 or U.S. Highway 66 (US 66 or Route 66) was one of the original highways in the United States Numbered Highway System. It was established on November 11, 1926, with road signs erected the following year. The highway ran from Chicago, Illinois, through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona before terminating in Santa Monica, California, covering a total of 2,448 miles (3,940 km).

It was recognized in popular culture by both the 1946 hit song "(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66" and the Route 66 television series, which aired on CBS from 1960 to 1964. It was also featured in the Disney/Pixar animated feature film franchise Cars, beginning in 2006. In John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), the highway symbolizes escape, loss and the hope of a new beginning; Steinbeck dubbed it the Mother Road. Other designations and nicknames include the Will Rogers Highway and the Main Street of America, the latter nickname shared with U.S. Route 40.

The Log from the Sea of Cortez is an English-language book written by American author John Steinbeck and published in 1951. It details a six-week (March 11 – April 20) marine specimen-collecting boat expedition he made in 1940 at various sites in the Gulf of California (also known as the Sea of Cortez), with his friend, the marine biologist Ed Ricketts. It is regarded as one of Steinbeck's most important works of non-fiction chiefly because of the involvement of Ricketts, who shaped Steinbeck's thinking and provided the prototype for many of the pivotal characters in his fiction, and the insights it gives into the philosophies of the two men.

The Log from the Sea of Cortez is the narrative portion of an earlier work, Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research, which was published by Steinbeck and Ricketts shortly after their return from the Gulf of California, and combined the journals of the collecting expedition, reworked by Steinbeck, with Ricketts' species catalogue. After Ricketts' death in 1948, Steinbeck dropped the species catalogue from the earlier work and republished it with a eulogy to his friend added as a foreword.