by William Saroyan

Bom August 31, 1908, William Saroyan grew up the son of immigrant Armenian parents in the ethnically diverse central Californian town of Fresno. Saroyan faced discrimination from teachers and townsfolk during his youth. Twenty years later he detailed some of those memories in The Human Comedy, setting them during World War II, which was unfolding as he wrote the book. The fictional incidents inspired by his memories paralleled many acts of discrimination and violence faced by people of different ethnicities in the United States during the Second World War.

Events in History at the Time of the Novel

World War II and the Holocaust. By 1943, when The Human Comedy was published, a major conflict had been taking place between Axis and Allied powers over much of Europe for four years already. In September 1939, Germany's dictator, Adolf Hitler, ordered his troops to kill "without...