John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck’s life was framed by global conflict. Born on 27 February 1902, in Salinas, California, he was twelve years old when World War I began and sixteen when Germany and the Allies signed an armistice bringing to cessation the “War to End All Wars.” Unfortunately, World War II began in 1939. Echoes of the rise of Adolf Hitler and threats of war occur throughout his early works, as in the journals accompanying The Grapes of Wrath (1939), in which he writes of the angst of his times, fearing the inevitably approaching conflict. When World War II came, he became involved in the wartime efforts, working as a correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune and experiencing the London Blitz, with sixty-six of his eighty-five dispatches gathered in Once There Was a War (1958). Recognizing Steinbeck’s expertise as a writer and desiring to enlist public support, the government commissioned him to write Bombs Away (1942), an account of a bomber team and its specially equipped plane. Hence, he observed American airmen as they trained and went into battle, flying on forays with them. Similarly, during the Vietnam War Newsday hired him as a war correspondent, and again he went to the front and into battle with the enlisted men, with his accounts collected in Letters to Alicia (1965). On the home front, the San Francisco News commissioned him to report on Dust Bowl migrants working as harvesters in California. Incensed by what he witnessed—the specter of starvation, babies and children dying, and malnutrition taking a toll on the very humanity of the migrants—he wrote The Harvest Gypsies (1936), background for The Grapes of Wrath. An early ecologist, Steinbeck loved the land, depicting the earth as a living, sensate character in The Grapes of Wrath—an elegiac mourning over its the desecration. Later, his nonfiction America and Americans (1966) decried pollution and the felling of redwood trees. Looking into the future with some hope but much trepidation, this work also addressed ethnic and racial prejudices, questionable politics, ageism and sexism, loss of ethical moorings. Believing his country to be infested with a deadly immorality, he warned Americans to root out this cancerous growth in order to survive. His last work of fiction, The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), carried these same concerns, with protagonist Ethan Allen Hawley portrayed as an Every American, who must rise above his failings. John Steinbeck died 20 December 1968, of congestive heart failure.

An Analysis on The Chrysanthemums based on the Perspective of Archetypal Criticism

The Chrysanthemums is a short story written by John Steinbeck, a modern American writer. The short story reveals the heroine’s inner pain and spiritual pursuit by taking the chrysanthemums as a central image and clue. The paper aims to analyze the short story based on the perspective of archetypal criticism. It mainly includes three parts: the first one is about archetypes of images and characters, the second part is to analyze the archetype of motif, and the third part is about the archetype of narrative structure.

Of Mice and Men, de John Steinbeck

O objetivo deste trabalho é propor uma tradução para o português brasileiro do primeiro trecho da obra literária Of mice and men de John Steinbeck. O excerto escolhido contém a voz do narrador, em linguagem norma culta padrão do inglês norte-americano, em oposição à voz dos dois protagonistas da história, Lennie e George, concebida como variante dialetal contento traços de oralidade, muitas vezes marcada por vocábulos informais e/ou uso da ortografia e sintaxe fora da norma culta padrão. O objetivo da tradução foi tentar manter no português brasileiro a oposição entre a voz, em norma culta padrão, do narrador, e as marcas de oralidade das falas das personagens de modo a tentar manter a verossimilhança com o discurso oral dos falantes do português brasileiro, assim como a verossimilhança interna com a oralidade característica das falas das personagens.

Historia socioeconómica y ficción literaria: consecuencias de la Gran Depresión en Of Mice and Men (1937) de John Steinbeck

La mayor parte de los temas generales de la historia económica, por su naturaleza social, admiten su abordaje desde numerosas perspectivas, como las que muestran los postulados del sociólogo germano Max Weber. Siguiendo los criterios que se desprenden de la concepción socioeconómica weberiana, advertimos que las causas y consecuencias de la Gran Depresión de los años 30 en EE.UU. puede considerarse uno de los hechos más frecuentemente estudiados con bibliografía proveniente tanto de la ficción literariacomo de otras esferas del arte. El multipremiado John Steinbeck, autor de varios relatos que registran el mayor fracaso económico-financiero de la historia moderna, nos propone una mirada alternativa en Of Mice and Men (1937). Esta criticada y controvertida novela es un documento de protesta y denuncia social, reflejado en las andanzas de George Milton y Lennie Small, dos peones rurales migrantes que representan a los miles de jornaleros que emprendieron un éxodo hacia el Oeste estadounidense,enfrentando los efectos devastadores de la mayor crisis económica mundial que conoce el sector agrícola del mundo desarrollado.

POSTCOLONIAL TRANSLATION STUDIES: FOREIGNIZATION AND DOMESTICATION OF CULTURE-SPECIFIC ITEMS IN OF MICE AND MEN’S INDONESIAN TRANSLATED VERSIONS

Resistance to Western Culture can be seen through translator’s strategy of translating novels. This research aims to analyze the translation of culture-specific items in Indonesian translated versions of Of Mice and Men, originally written by John Steinbeck. The selected translated versions belong to the work of Pramoedya Ananta Toer (2003) and Ariyantri E. Tarman (2017). The translations of culture-specific items are analyzed under Transnational American Studies paradigm to find out the dominant translation principle applied in both translated versions and the results are discussed from the perspective of postcolonial translation studies. From the data, it is found out that the domestication principle is more dominant than foreignization strategy. Analyzed from postcolonial translation studies, the tendency to use the domestication principle in translated novels show the efforts of the target culture to fight against Western culture as the source culture. Although both Indonesian versions of Of Mice and Men mostly apply the domestication principle, the recent translated version (T2) shows an increase in the use of foreignization principle in which English loanwords are frequently used. From a postcolonial translation studies’ perspective, it can be concluded that target culture is against Western culture; however, the signs of cultural imperialism, especially linguistic imperialism, have grown in the recent years.

Tiểu thuyết Chùm nho phẫn nộ của John Steinbeck và những “đối thoại” để ngỏ

Chùm nho phẫn nộ (1939) là một trong những tiểu thuyết thành công nhất của nhà văn John Steinbeck. Tác phẩm gồm 30 chương, phản ánh hiện thực Mỹ những năm đầu thế kỷ XX. Đây là tác phẩm góp phần quan trọng thuyết phục Viện Hàn lâm Thụy Điển trao giải Nobel văn chương năm 1962 cho sự nghiệp văn học của J. Steinbeck. Tại sao chúng ta vẫn tiếp tục nghiên cứu tác phẩm Chùm nho phẫn nộ? Đây là câu hỏi mà giới nghiên cứu văn học thế kỷ XXI đặt ra. Sự hấp dẫn của tác phẩm nằm trong cách viết của nhà văn. John Steinbeck đã tạo ra Chùm nho phẫn nộ như văn bản đối thoại. Bằng sự kết hợp thể loại phóng sự trong tiểu thuyết, ông đã đối thoại với văn học truyền thống về thể loại tiểu thuyết. Trong quan niệm của ông, tiểu thuyết hiện đại cần thay đổi. Trong tác phẩm này, ông cũng đối thoại với tôn giáo và lịch sử. Những băn khoăn của John Steinbecktrong Chùm nho phẫn nộ như những câu hỏi chưa có câu trả lời. Nó buộc người đọc phải nghiên cứu, giải thích, tìm nghĩa. Vì vậy, Chùm nho phẫn nộ không phải là tác phẩm chứng minh cho lịch sử mà đa nghĩa, chuyển tải những vấn đề nhân loại.

On the Legacy of the Land: Ideology Criticism of Walter Brueggemann and John Steinbeck

This article addresses the sensitive, religious-political issue of the promised land. It discusses this issue from the perspective of the criticism of the promised land in the works of Walter Brueggemann in comparison to his artistic source of influence, John Steinbeck. After the systematic analysis of Brueggemann’s criticism of land ideology throughout his work, I elaborate on Steinbeck’s critical attitude to this topic which I offer as Steinbeck’s own alternative criticism. On top of the affirmation that “Steinbeck may have put the issue of the land most eloquently,” as suggested by Brueggemann himself, I propose that Steinbeck (unlike Brueggemann) does not fall into the trap of producing an inverted ideology and offers a balanced and timeless criticism of the promised land issue.