Comparison Of John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

In the novel, Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck portrays the lifestyle of typical working man trying to make a living off of work from a ranch. Much like Steinbeck's life, Lennie and George must work their way up to their dream of having their own farm. The novel goes in depth of the struggles and challenges of migrant workers during the Great Depression era. Despite millions of people being out of work during this time, they had to find jobs that would help them survive as well as their families. George and Lennie were forced to move to find new labor, depicting similar situations in both the novel and real life during the Great Depression. Steinbeck connects to the labor workers because of his background, and he depicted the conditions of average

George and Lennie portray the average male worker during the Great Depression, homeless, hungry, and looking for work anywhere that would take them. Many people were forced into the manual labor due to drops in loss of jobs and George and Lennie were forced to move around for work. The novel followed the setting of the Great Depression by focusing on the work and other obstacles George and Lennie were put under. "Depictions of these hobos are found in many varieties of art, from paintings, photography, music, and literature. This lesson explores the various representations of depression era migrant farm workers and compares them to migrant farm workers of today." (The Gilder Lehrman Instiute of American History, Of Mice and Men and Migrant Workers of the Depression). George and Lennie were depicted as the perfect set of migrant workers in the years between 1929 and 1939. This time was the most deepest economic down turn in the history of the industrialized Western world. Conditions were worse off, people unemployed, homeless, and dying, and there was nothing to do aside from waiting for employment. "Part of the huge grain growing industry of the American west, Depression Era itinerant farm workers like George and Lennie, mostly single men, traveled by boxcar from farm to farm in search of work and ever since have populated the landscape of the American cultural milieu." (Matthew Clements, Of Mice and Men and migrant workers of the Great Depression). The way workers had to move around, some with families, were just another hoop to jump through and many workers had handle it very well. In order for them to survive and their families they needed work, even if it meant moving around from country side to country side. It was just one of the many struggles of being a laborer, and George and Lennie represented migrants in that way very well throughout the