by John Steinbeck

Like many of John Steinbeck's novels, the four short stories that make up The Red Pony take place on a ranch in the Salinas Valley in central California. While Steinbeck himself was raised in the town of Salinas, he was familiar with ranch life, having worked as a young man on beet ranches in the area. Steinbeck has often been praised for his accurate depiction of life in the Salinas Valley as portrayed in The Red Pony and his other works of fiction.

Events in History at the Time the Novel Takes Place

The Salinas Valley. Each of the four parts of The Red Pony depicts the experiences of Jody Tiflin. Although readers are never told Jody's exact age or in precisely what year his experiences take place, it is believed that Steinbeck drew on his own childhood as a point...