Of Mice and Men is a short novel written by John Steinbeck in 1937. The book takes place in southern California during the time of the dust bowl, and focuses on 2 migrant workers, George and Lennie. Throughout the book, there is many belittling of others. Steinbeck uses various scenes involving the discrimination of minority people and character development to show people have an inherent need to make others feel powerless in order to feel more power themselves.
One of the main ideas of the novel is the deprecation of others in order to feel more powerful. Of Mice and Men is a miniature scale of our society as a whole, and this belittling can be seen in society on a greater scale with racism, sexism, ageism, and discrimination of the disabled.
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One example of this is where Candy explains why Curley was picking a fight with Lennie. “He hates big guys… S’pose Curley jumps a big guy an’ licks him. Ever’body says what a game guy Curley is. And s’pose he does the same thing and gets licked. Then ever’body says the big guy oughtta pick on somebody his own size, and maybe they gang up on the big guy. Never did seem right to me. Seems like Curley ain’t givin’ nobody a chance.” (26) This quote shows that Curley will do whatever it takes to be respected, especially when it involves fighting. Another example of this belittling is where George says “Used to play jokes on ‘im ‘cause he was too dumb to take ‘imself. But he was too dumb even to know he had a joke played on him.” (40) This shows that George used Lennie’s mental disability to amuse himself, completely disrespecting Lennie as a person and making himself feel more powerful. A third example of this from the book is where Curley’s wife says to Crooks “Well you keep your place then, Nigger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain’t even funny.” (81) This shows the inherent racism of the