Why Does John Steinbeck Present Ideas About Society In The 1930's

Racism was quite an issue during the time period in which this book takes place. Crooks, the only black

The character of Crooks is a victim of intolerance and discrimination throughout the novel. Society takes advantage of Crooks and neglects him because of the stereotypes of his skin colour. Crooks is not allowed to enter the bunk house where the white men sleep, or dine with them. He is left with the animals, isolated from everyone and exploited by most of the men on the

Relating to Crooks as an equal, they share the plan to buy a farm. Race is forgotten, until Curley’s wife appears. Forgetting to remember that he is black, Crooks’s orders her out of his room when she becomes belligerent and insulting. The backlash is immediate. Curley’s wife attacks Crooks in the most despicable display of racism in the novel. Warning him to remember his “place” and stay in it, she reminds Crooks that she can have him “strung up on a tree so easy it ain’t even funny,” implying that she has the power to kill him by accusing him of rape or some other heinous assault. The threat is chilling because Crooks knows it’s true. His word means nothing, and Lennie and Candy’s testimony would not save him from her false

The novel is set during the Great Depression in the 1930’s. During this time, many

Even though Crooks, a black stable hand, has been around the Ranch longer than most people and he is still probably one of the most lonely. This lack of contact with other people has made him severely bitter especially when people enter his personal space. He creates his personal space with books because it helps him cope with the loneliness. So when Lennie tries to befriend him he freaks out by exclaiming, “You got no right to come in to my room. This here’s my room. Nobody got any right in her but me.”(68) In addition to Crooks being lonely he is also segregated from all the other workers. He lives in the barn with the animals instead of the bunkhouse with the others. It’s also very hard for Crooks to associate with the others, because during the time period blacks are seen as a lower class of people. When Crooks states, “Guys don’t come in to a colored man’s room very much.”(75) It shows how little contact he has with the others because of how segregated he is. This segregation mirrors the Jim Crow laws that were active during this period. Crooks’s treatment on the ranch represents the racial discrimination against blacks in

There is a lot of racial prejudice shown in this novel towards Crooks, the black stable-hand. Crooks, the “more permanent than the other men” (67), had his own “little shed that leaned off the wall of the barn” (66) with “more possessions than he could carry on his back” (67). He, "ain’t wanted in the bunk house" (68) just because he is "black, they play cards in there but I can’t play because I’m black" (68). Curley’s wife would never call him by his name, and treated him awfully while abusing her position as the boss’ son’s wife. “’Listen, Nigger’, she said, ‘you know what I can do to you if you open you trap’"(80).

Crooks is mentioned in chapter four as the black guy who has his own living area due to the color of his skin. Because of Crooks’ age and race, readers can learn that he is isolated from from white people and made “invisible” by society. Despite his experiences, Crooks longs to

Being black during this time period is directly related to discrimination. During the 1930’s discrimination was based on race and Crooks did everything separately because of his skin color. Being black cost him not being able to do have certain rights white people had. Crooks is a typical example of the discrimination faced by African Americans during this time period.

John Steinbeck, an American novelist, is well-known for his familiar themes of depression and loneliness. He uses these themes throughout a majority of his novels. These themes come from his childhood and growing up during the stock market crash. A reader can see his depiction of his childhood era. In Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck shows the prominent themes of loneliness, the need for relationships, and the loss of dreams in the 1930s through the novels’ character.

The novel is written during the Great Depression. The Great Depression was a financial crisis that happened worldwide around the united states. It was a huge unemployment and ended in mechanical preparations and constructions. It happened before the New Era, a period of low unemployment when there was a great difference of income with general prosperity. The Great Depression began in “Black Tuesday” in October 29, 1929. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell very nearly 23 percent and the market lost 8 billion dollars and 9 billion dollars in quality. By 1933, when the Great Depression came to its nadir, by most accounts 13 to 15 million Americans were unemployed and about a large portion of the nation's banks failed. Despite the fact that the alleviation and change measures set up by President Franklin D. Roosevelt helped decrease the most extremely bad

Crooks is described as a dark man with a “crooked spine” and “his lean face lined with deep black wrinkles” (67). He is a stable buck who lives in a shed on the side of the barn. Since he’s so isolated he fills his room with more personal possessions and books than the other men

Crooks is the black stable buck, who often received many hardships because of his skin color. Around the same time, while Lennie, Crooks, and Candy are in Crooks room, many things said show us a lot more about Crooks character; whereas, before all we knew was that he was a black stable buck with a crooked back. As the three characters talk, we learn a lot about Crooks character that shows how isolated he was, and how much prejudice he received. A part that stuck out to me was when the novel said: ‘Candy leaned against the wall beside the broken collar while he scratched his wrist stump. "I been here a long time," he said.

For example, they would have not been given basic rights such as the will of free speech or having authority over the white. Even women were considered to be higher in rank than the black. This prejudice had gone to such lengths, even the word ‘nigger’ was considered to be a common noun; this implies how vast racism was. Unfortunately for Crooks, he is the only coloured man on the ranch which means that he has been marginalized and sealed from the outside world. The fact that Crooks has been marginalized this portrays how incomplete he is for example having lack of interaction with others, no friendships and in his unused time he resides in his room alone. This reflects on him not having companionship, instead he consumes it with work, collecting items such as shoes and reading books repeatedly. The emotion loneliness is a key theme throughout the text; this resembles the character of

The novel is set in the twenties, following World War I. The economy is booming, which is crucial for the ability to convey the themes of the American Dream and post-war moods. Set in New York City, the book opens in the West Egg, a new money part of the upper class neighborhoods.

Social realism, according to Kevin Attell’s An Overview of Mice and Men, is the main motive why Steinbeck wrote Of Mice and Men. Most readers would approve of this claim because the evidence Attell conveys to the reader justifies the author’s purpose of creating literary work. Furthermore, Attell brings in themes and concerns that strongly connect to social realism which also ties in with the author’s personal background.