STUDY QUESTIONS

CALIFORNIA:  AN INTERPRETIVE HISTORY (8th Ed.)

CHAPTER 26  -  CULTURAL TRENDS

1. Who was Robinson Jeffers and why did reject humanism?  How did his poetry seek to reflect his views on "inhumanism?"
2. Did it bother Jeffers that his critics complained that his poems were full of tragedy and violence?  Could it be that Jeffers' characters suffered for his own personal sins in life that he perhaps internally felt guilty over?
3. In what ways did John  Steinbeck satirize middle class values in his novels?
4. Did Steinbeck's writings sympathize with communism?
5. Even though it won the Pulitzer Prize, why was the Grapes of Wrath so controversial?  Were the working conditions of migrant workers really as bad as he detailed?
6. Which northern California cities did John Steinbeck and William Saroyan respectively grow up in?
7. How did William Saroyan describe his literary style?
8. What impact did Hollywood have on Nathanael West and Aldous Huxley during the 1930s?
9. How did William Randolph Hearst use his family fortune to use in the newspaper business?
10. Why did Hearst Castle become such a popular tourist destination in San Simeon after his death (and even still today)?
11. What were the nationwide trends that hurt newspapers throughout the state from 1945 to 1965?
12. What efforts did Los Angeles take to become a serious rival to San Francisco as the state's cultural capital after WW II?
13. Who was Dorothea Lange and what did her most famous works deal with?
14. What was Willis Polk best known for in the Bay Area in the early twentieth century?

Key Names, Terms, and Concepts