Blog Post #5
Focus on Social Studies:

Hello, this is my second to last blog post and now it’s time to look at the connection between my book, “Of Mice and Men, and the English Social Studies class I am taking right now. Last semester we learned a lot about the roaring 20s where the men returned from war and the economy was booming, but then the next decade wasn’t as bright! The 30s turned things upside down and the economic recession affected many people. It all started with the overproduction of Goods after World War 1, it was hard to find a market for the products during this period and the overproduction was one of the causes of the stock market crash in 1929. It is also known as the black Tuesday, Big stockholders were left with a debt too big to pay off. All this bankruptcy led to a huge amount of people being unemployed. First in 1933 when Franklin Roosevelt started his “New Deal” policy, it reversed the downward spiral. The depression is very much a part of John Steinbeck’s novel “Of mice and Men”, this is shown through many of the characters in the book like for instance George, Lennie, Candy and Crooks. However, this is not only in this novel where Steinbeck tells a story about the Great Depression era, like for example “Grapes of Wrath” where a family has to leave their farm behind to look for the Promised Land California. But enough about that, let’s go on talking about “Of Mice and Men” and how Steinbeck talks about the depression through the characters.

The first impression of George and Lennie already told us a lot about them, they are uneducated and very poor farm workers. Which was very usual in California during the national recession, many people came to the Promised Land California to find work. It almost seemed like people thought that California was not a part of the United States and therefore not affected by the recession. So as we know, there were many other migrant workers that went to California and had the same dream as George and Lennie, their own land. Steinbeck shows this through the only black character in the book, Crooks, when he says “I seen hundreds of men come by on the road an’ on the ranches, with their bindles on their back an’ that same damn thing in their heads . . . every damn one of ’em’s got a little piece of land in his head.” (section 4, page 99). Here Steinbeck first of shows us what segregation and lonliness does to a person over several years! You get cruel and don’t have faith in humanity or dreams anymore. However, Steinbeck also shows us that there have been so many migrant workers during the past which is explained by the poor conditions people had to live under. Another example of Steinbeck showing us the reality of the Depression is when we hear about the bunk house “...the walls were whitewashed and the floor unpainted…against the walls were eight bunks…over each bunk there was nailed an apple box with the opening forward so that it made two shelves for the personal belongings…”. I don’t know about you, but I am left with a picture in my head of a typical old farming bunk house after reading this.

 random picture of a bunkhouse, 1930s

John Steinbeck tells this story of the two migrant workers, George and Lennie, and at the same time tells us a lot about the Great Depression. It is crazy to think about the fantasy some authors have, sometimes it feels like John Steinbeck knew George and Lennie personally and just retells their story, as if he was part of it.