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Of Mice and Men

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1865: Slavery and US civil war. SLAVERY played a central role in the history of the United States, existing from the early 1600s, and indirectly led to the Civil War which finally brought about its abolition in 1865.

1865: Slavery and US civil war

Over those 250 or so years, up to 11 million Africans were kidnapped from their homes, packed aboard ships in appalling conditions and taken across the Atlantic to strange new countries they had never heard of. Only about six per cent were imported into the United States. Most went to Brazil or the Caribbean. The slave trade sprang up mainly as living conditions improved back in England.

People had previously sold themselves into servitude in exchange for a passage to America, where they believed life was better. Their numbers dried up and landowners turned to Africans — small numbers of whom had been shipped over by the Portuguese since as early as the 1530s. Almost no one in America raised a moral objection, coming as they did from societies in which the rich routinely exploited the poor.

Slavery was no more. 1776: US War of Independence. THE DECLARATION of Independence and the eight-year war that achieved its aims marked the birth of America as a nation.

1776: US War of Independence

It arose out of the resentment over British control which had been growing as the colonies expanded throughout the early 18th Century. And it was fuelled by the imposition of new taxes by King George III’s Government. Breaking point came when Britain granted the East India Company a big tax break, giving it a monopoly on tea sales in the colonies. The colonists were outraged. On December 16, 1773, a group disguised as Indians boarded three English ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbour.

This act of defiance — the “Boston Tea Party” — triggered war. The Great Gatsby and the American dream. In the New York Times earlier this year, Paul Krugman wrote of an economic effect called "The Great Gatsby curve," a graph that measures fiscal inequality against social mobility and shows that America's marked economic inequality means it has correlatively low social mobility.

The Great Gatsby and the American dream

In one sense this hardly seems newsworthy, but it is telling that even economists think that F Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece offers the most resonant (and economical) shorthand for the problems of social mobility, economic inequality and class antagonism that we face today. Nietzsche – whose Genealogy of Morals Fitzgerald greatly admired – called the transformation of class resentment into a moral system "ressentiment"; in America, it is increasingly called the failure of the American dream, a failure now mapped by the "Gatsby curve". "How would you place them? " she exclaimed. "Great ladies, bourgeoises, adventuresses - they are all the same. Suddenly she pointed to an American girl going into the water: Of Mice and Men Revision MP3s - Chapter Summaries. Learning Zone Class Clips - Richard Wilson Reads 'To a Mouse' - English Video.

John Steinbeck: Voice of America - BBC TV. In Steinbeck's footsteps: America's middle-class underclass. 28 July 2011Last updated at 14:22 By Paul Mason Economics editor, Newsnight Watch Paul Mason's film in full In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck describes the harrowing journey of the Joad family - migrant workers forced to leave their home during the Great Depression - a story still relevant to those facing the realities of America's current economic crisis.

In Steinbeck's footsteps: America's middle-class underclass

The drought in Oklahoma has been described as worse than the Great Dust Bowl days of the 1930s "To the red country, and part of the gray country of Oklahoma the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth…" That is how Steinbeck begins The Grapes of Wrath. This year the last rains came in May to western Oklahoma. Brett Porter, who farms 3,000 hectares, unrolls the last of his hay in front of a thirsty line of prime Angus cattle. "I already sold half my mamma cows and I sent my calves to market early," he says.

He has been working on the herd's DNA for 12 years. Continue reading the main story Motel hopping. Newsnight - In Steinbeck's footsteps: America's middle class underclass. Learning Zone Class Clips - John Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men' - Historical Context (pt 4/4) - English Video. Learning Zone Class Clips - John Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men' - Historical Context (pt 3/4) - English Video. Learning Zone Class Clips - John Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men' - Historical Context (pt 2/4) - English Video. Learning Zone Class Clips - John Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men' - Historical Context (pt 1/4) - English Video.