“Want me to tell ya what’ll happen? They’ll take ya to the booby hatch. They’ll tie ya up with a collar, like a dog” (Steinbeck 72). Discrimination plays a large role to feeling lonely. In the novella Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, characters endure attempts by society to make them “invisible.” These include racism, ageism, sexism, and isolation. More specifically, three of these characters experience loneliness from acts of discrimination. Factors contributing to their loneliness include ageism, disability discrimination, and racism. Each of these characters are migrant workers during the Great Depression who are discriminated against in different ways. Thus, through Candy, Crooks, and Curley’s wife, Steinbeck reveals the powerful …show more content…
Understanding just how important security is to his own future, Candy hopes he can tempt George with his life’s savings and seal the deal when he mentions he had no living relatives to either help him or benefit from his death. Scared and embarrassed, Candy never comes straight out and admits how ageism has affected him, but he does express his feelings of fear and his desire to feel like he belongs when he comments to George, “They’ll can me purty soon. Just as soon as I can’t swamp out no bunkhouses…” (60). Without any family or friends, without a job or any money, Candy latches on to the idea of owning land together: “An’ it’d be our own, an’ nobody could can us” (58). Unfortunately, since Candy is much older than the other ranch workers, he often feels left out and lonely amongst a group of young, healthy men. Despite his insecurities, Candy still wants to contribute something to society to help provide him with a sense of purpose and to help make him feel like someone still needs him. 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
Discrimination plays a big role in Of Mice and Men, since it takes place during the Great Depression. Racial segregation, gender rights, and handicap vulnerability are all problems in Of Mice and Men that reflect the society at the time. Curley’s wife, Crooks, and Candy are discriminated against on the ranch just like they would be in society.
Discrimination was one of the issues that caused conflict in the novel “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck. One example of discrimination in the novel comes in the form of racial discrimination against Crooks, as he is an African American. Another example of discrimination is gender discrimination against Curley’s wife. Finally, there is discrimination against mentally disabled people, which is evident in Lennie’s character. The ranch hands' actions and conversations demonstrated the racial discrimination against Crooks for his skin colour, gender discrimination against Curley’s wife for her gender, and prejudice against Lennie, who was mentally disabled individual. This prevented the characters from reaching their full potential and
In the literary work Of Mice and Men, the reader is introduced to the ranch as a world of its own, within which prejudice plays a significant part. The characters in this novel act as a community in a world of their own, having no connections to any other type of society. A strong point, enforced through many examples in the book, is the constant ability of the stronger to overcome the weaker. The prejudices of the majority towards the minority, at the ranch are the white-males, who retain power over the lesser groups of people. This inequality, as well as the influence of the time period, causes discrimination against people of color, women, and those that are disabled, either mentally or physically.
“Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty,” said Mother Teresa. Humanity has struggled against being left alone and being lonely for a long time. As a result, humans formed a society where they could be together. On the other hand, there are still people who are left out of the society. In other words, there are still people out there who are marginalized, not accepted fairly to the society. John Steinbeck shows the marginalized people’s lives in his novel, Of Mice and Men. In his novel, characters such as Lennie, George, Candy, Curley’s wife, Crooks, and even the ranch workers, are marginalized from the society. Ranch workers like George, Candy, and Lennie have nowhere to go, and they do not have anybody to care for them. Especially for Lennie, he is mentally challenged, too. Crooks, being the colored man, suffers from discrimination. Curley’s wife is constantly surrounded with loneliness. In Of Mice and Men, marginalized people who are neglected from the society, create a society of their own; they share their dreams and help each other out although they are all different from each other.
In a room right off the side of a barn sits a crippled colored man. A big, kind, mentally disabled man sits on a nail keg. An old, one-armed man leans against one of the walls. A lonely wife looking for company stands in the middle of the doorway. They are the outsiders and prime examples for a theme that is the backbone of the story. Discrimination not only affects the story’s characters, but it also impacts the story itself. Discrimination greatly affects the outcome of the story and its characters’ actions and thoughts in Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. Although each character faces discrimination in various ways, Lennie, Candy, Crooks, and Curley’s wife are all viewed as outsiders and share the common key theme of discrimination in their lives.
John Steinbeck demonstrates the effects of discrimination in the novella Of Mice and Men, by using differences in characters, symbolism, and social acts.
The novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck displays prejudice with many of the characters in the book such as Candy, Crooks, and Curley’s and shows the reader multiple ways people can be discriminated, how it’s wrong, and it hurts people. Steinbeck displays Curley’s wife’s loneliness by “I get lonely, she said. You can talk to people, but I can’t talk to nobody but Curley” (Steinbeck 87). This shows the reader that no one is talking to Curley’s wife because she is a married woman so she is isolated from the other men. Crook is the only black character in the book. He is stuck in a little shack by himself separated from the other workers. For example, “I ain’t wanted in the bunkhouse and you ain’t wanted in my
There are many people out there in the world that are discriminated because of the way they were born or how they act. In the book Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck is a realistic fiction book that talks about how people were discriminated during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. I'm going to show you who and how people were discriminated in the book Of Mice And Men. Lennie, Curley’s Wife and crook’s are discriminated because of their brain, gender and color.
“Why ain’t you wanted?” Lennie asked. “Cause I’m black.” page 68 “Of Mice and Men”. In Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, 2 men named George and Lennie have a problem in a place named weed. Later move to another ranch where they plan to have their own farm in the future with a man named candy. While there Lennie gets into trouble and later gets into more trouble because of a similar problem that happened in Weed.In Of Mice and Men ,discrimination exists in the form of racism,sexism, and feeble mindedness.
“Defeating racism, tribalism, intolerance, and all forms of discrimination will liberate us all, victim and perpetrator alike” (Ban Ki-Moon). This famous quote from Ban Ki-Moon described different types of discrimination and how they can be overpowered. In the book Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, many forms of discrimination are shown through different characters in their own ways. Discrimination affects characters in Of Mice and Men through Lennie being overprotected by George, Crooks living alone in anger, and Curley’s wife flirting with everyone and being judged for her gender.
In the novella Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, the topic of loneliness is very heavily emphasized throughout the story. This is especially noticeable in the fact that George and Lennie are very unique in that they travel together, which is something most migrant workers do not do. It seems that almost everyone on the ranch is lonely in some way or another, from Crooks to Candy to Curley’s wife. Through the use of dialogue and characterization, Steinbeck demonstrates that loneliness can be caused by social barriers or personal choice, and sometimes both.
In some cases, seclusion can cause a person to push away others or prevent activities that require social interaction. Crooks, the stable hand, illustrates the severity of racial discrimination in the early 1900’s, the time period the book is set in. He was excluded from entering the bunkhouses that shelters all the white ranch hands. Instead, Crooks lives outside, in a small shed next to the barn. Furthermore, he was not allowed to participate in activities that the others were, such as playing cards. When Lennie enters the barn to check on the puppies, he spots the light emitting from Crooks’s room. Out of curiosity, Lennie tracks the source down, leading him face to face with Crooks. Lennie’s intentions were purely friendly, but Crooks instantly attempts to turn him away,
The stench of farm animals was strong in the tiny windowless room. Unlike the noisy bunk house, this room was dead silent. If someone were to walk past it they would not think that it were fit for a human. That was a scene from the novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. This novel is based around the early nineteen hundreds on a farm in California. In this story George and Lennie are two men who try to find work, enough work to get their own land. The only problem with this is that Lennie is mentally handicapped and can’t keep a job. In the novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, discrimination is shown by sexism towards the Woman, racism towards Crooks, and hatred towards Lennie because he’s mentally handicapped.
John Steinbeck highlights the theme of loneliness in his novel Of Mice and Men to show that many individuals who were discriminated against were lonely; Curley’s wife is lonely because she is a woman, Crooks is lonely because he is African American, and migrant workers are lonely because they have no one who cares about them. To begin, Curley’s wife was often lonely because she was a woman. In the great depression, women were not valued and were not as important as men were. They would often be looked down upon, and the men often acted as if they owned their wives, such as when Curley treats his wife poorly. This caused her to be lonely because she had no one to talk to. To show this in the book, Curley’s wife says, “I never get to talk to
‘Of Mice and Men’, John Steinbeck’s novella, is a poignant tale dealing with the lives of itinerant workers in the harsh depression years of 1930s America. One of its main themes is that of racism and how widespread the victimisation of different coloured people was, focusing particularly on one of the ranch workers, the swamped Crooks. ‘Country Lovers’ is a short story about the forbidden love between a black woman, Thebedi, and Paulus, the son of her white masters. It is a story of a love borne out of a childhood romance that blossomed into adulthood until the harmless flirtation lead to sexual curiosity. Finally, ‘The Golden Cadillac’ is a novella which takes place around the 1950s, about African Americans being treated unbearably, exclusively