The global economic state of affairs was shaken by the crisis of 1929. This situation witnessed the decline of British as a global hegemon and the promotion of the United States to be the potential economic leader. For nationalist reasons, artists and writers found it necessary to concretize the cultural basis of the country on which to set its economic system. This article studies John Steinbeck’s fiction that embodies the insinuation of the existence of capitalism in the United States through its functionality. The main argument in this discourse analysis is that Steinbeck’s methodology to address the US’s capitalism resides in the representation through which characters expose that economic system and at the same time struggle to exclude other unwanted systems that are forcing their ways through.
The global economic state of affairs was shaken by the crisis of 1929. This situation witnessed the decline of British as a global hegemon and the promotion of the United States to be the potential economic leader. For nationalist reasons, artists and writers found it necessary to concretize the cultural basis of the country on which to set its economic system. This article studies John Steinbeck’s fiction that embodies the insinuation of the existence of capitalism in the United States through its functionality. The main argument in this discourse analysis is that Steinbeck’s methodology to address the US’s capitalism resides in the representation through which characters expose that economic system and at the same time struggle to exclude other unwanted systems that are forcing their ways through.