John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California in 1902. He attended Stanford University and moved to job to job. He was a reporter of New York American, but soon he returned to California. Some of the best scene in Steinbeck's stories take place around the Salinas Valley. His first story book, Cup of Gold in 1929 wasn't a success. But he looked back at the California's valley, and began to write about the happy times and the sad times in the lives of poor families in the western part of America. He wrote many popular stories, and many of them become a movie, like The Grapes of Wrath, The Little Pony etc. John Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, and was died in New York in 1968.
Story Overview:
In this story, the writer wrote about his mother's family and showed the difficult feelings between a father and his sons and their understanding of right and wrong.
Jody Tiflin, who is growing up on a small ranch in California early in the twentieth century. He is a thoughtful, lonely boy. One day, he received a gift from Billy Buck, the Tiflin's worker. It is a red pony, Jody was very happy and gave it a name: Gabilan. He took a good care of it. They always go for a walk at the hill back of their house together.
One day, Gabilan was sicked and Jody took care of it until it recover with Billy's help. Another day, Jody and Gabilan was attacked by the buzzard while they were walking at the hill. Gabilan was almost be killed.
Jody was grows day by day. He went to the wonderful and scary great mountain by himself. He is wiser than before, but also sadder than before as he tries to understand the mysterious of life.
My Comment:
This story is about the way of development of a little boy. This progress was full of challenge and difficulties. But we must fight against them. While we win on this war, that mean we have grew up. This story was very good and I recommend you to borrow it and read it.
