The American Dream Classicism Essay

One of John Steinbeck’s main theme in his novels and short stories is The American Dream. While this might seem like a very broad topic, it is quite easy to break down this theme into smaller more cohesive topics. In Steinbeck 's stories, he uses a subtopic to the American Dream theme known as classicism. Classicism is defined as, “prejudice against or in favor of people belonging to a particular social class.” Most of the time, Steinbeck uses classism to describe the type of life that lower class farmers or workers experience. One example of classicism in his stories is defined in The Grapes of Wrath with the Joad family. They are classified as being part of the lower class because of their current economic situation and because they had lost their farm. Due to these circumstances, they were therefore placed in a lower social class. By informing the

In most of his stories which contain the classicism theme, we see this as an accompanying one. All the characters who are lower in the class structure and aren 't doing well both financially and relationship wise, always have a desire to become both successful and happy. The Joads are a perfect example of this strive for happiness and success. They want to be successful by traveling to California to find a new farm to grow on. Their burning desire for success is exemplified in their fight with both the natural elements such as major dust clouds and material difficulties such as their broken down jalopy. Another example of this theme is the journey for success with Lennie and George from Of Mice and Men. Throughout the story, these two friends continue to travel together (friendship) in order to find work to earn money and in turn become successful. They continue to travel to farms in California and elsewhere in hopes of making some money so that one day they can purchase their own piece of land to farm