By: Matt Matthew Sinrod Dr. Doyle Eng 102 5/5/98 Themes in "The Grapes of Wrath" John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California February 27th 1902. He was the third of four children and the only son of John Ernst Steinbeck II, manager of a flour mill, and Olive Hamilton Steinbeck, a former teacher. Steinbeck said of his youth, ("We were poor people with a hell of a lot of land which made us think we were rich people, even when we couldn't buy food and were patched.") Steinbeck used the area where he grew up as the setting for many of his stories. He attended Stanford University for a few years. He had to work to pay for his educ