John Steinbeck is widely known as one of the most memorable American writers and has greatly influenced realistic and regionalistic literature in the writing world. Steinbeck’s most well-known works that accomplished this are To a God Unknown and East of Eden. In To a God Unknown, Steinbeck writes about Joseph Wayne, a rancher who was born on his father 's ranch and is one of four boys. Joseph is the second youngest of the four boys, his brother Benjy being the youngest. As Joseph matures, he becomes internally connected with the land and moves to California to start a family and build a house. In East of Eden, Steinbeck writes about two immigrants from Ireland, Samuel Hamilton, a farmer, and inventor and his wife, Liza. Steinbeck describes how they raise their nine children in rough and infertile terrain and how they all slowly begin to grow up and start lives of their own. In the works To a God Unknown and East of Eden, John Steinbeck shows the theme of finding one 's own identity from external sources through the confrontation of responsibility, human relationships, and changes in daily life. In both works, Steinbeck shows that when people are forced to face responsibilities in life, these people discover more about their own identity. In To a God Unknown, Joseph and Liza have the task of dealing with different responsibilities, and this task reveals more of their personal identity to each one of them. In the body of the novel, Joseph and his wife, Liza, finally, arrive