Analyse af John Steinbecks novelle 'Breakfast'

All your life you have been growing up, learning to be helpful and grateful when you get something for free or from other. When the Great Depression was in USA it was a tough time for all of them there lived in USA. In 1929 until 1939 the Great Depression was a big thing, and it affected many people. That was what inspired John Steinbeck to write the short story “Breakfast” and that is what this short story is about. The narrator who is going somewhere and then meets some people who want to be helpful to him. This analytical essay will have focus on setting, the characters, theme, and message.

The short story breakfast takes place in the United States of America. The short story was written when the Great Depression was in the United States of America in the 1930s. We do not get told what time of the year it is and if its summer or what it is, but the girls tell us. “It was cold, not painfully so, but cold enough so that I rubbed my hands and shoved them deep into my pocket” (page 22, line 10-11). So that could give a hint to, that it is near wintertime and not summer. It is a quite poor environment they are in. The men have worked 12 days straight only just to survive and the mother works despite she has a baby. The narrator is 1. Person, you can tell that if you look in the text. In the story there is used “I” and “we”. “I don’t know why I can see it in the smallest detail. I find myself recalling again and again” (page 22, line 1-2). When the story is told in 1. Person it gives us a better inside look of how the person is felling, and we see it from his perspective.