Comparing The Real World In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

In Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, The events of the book are similar to problems we encounter in the real world, such as poverty, treating other people with mental disabilities differently, and racism. In Of Mice and Men, the two main characters, George and Lennie, are struggling to make it in the great depression. We see that life is very hard for both of them, both physically and financially. One point in the story when we see this is when George and Lennie are talking to Candy when they arrived at the ranch and tells them that every Christmas the head of the ranch brings in a gallon of whiskey. George replys with, “The hell he did, a whole gallon!” (Steinbeck, 1937, p.20). This shows that there was a lot of poverty, because George is

While there is a lot less poverty today, poverty is present in both the real world and in Of Mice and Men. Another issue that we see in both Of Mice and Men and the real world is unfair treatment of people with disabilities. In the text, we see many cases of people being mean or taking advantage of Lennie. Early on in the text, George is talking to the head of the ranch and said that when Lennie was a kid he got kicked in the head by a horse, even though he didn't. This shows that George doesnt think Lennie is smart and he's stupid, and by doing this he is putting Lennie into a situation where he cannot defend himself. Later in the text we see that when Lennie goes into Crooks office, Crooks knows that Lennie is dumb and talks to him because he knows that he doesn't listen and will forget, we also see this happen with Curley's wife. All of these are cases of Lennie being taken advantage of. In today's society, people who are mentally handicapped are treated better than the 1930s and in Of Mice and Men, however there are still some people in certain countries around the world that take advantage of people with a mental disability and even don't treat them like human