How Does Steinbeck Use Social Privilege In Of Mice And Men

How can someone avoid social privilege, or privilege in general that restricts people? In the material Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck illustrates examples of how the majority is constricted of how far they progress in life due to social advantages and relations. With the characters in Of Mice and Men, readers get a wide variety of diverse negative and positive benefits across the palate of struggling people. Privilege is a harsh reality defined by social status and molds humans into a predetermined way of living. Women are generally less privileged due to the gender barrier and roles. This is displayed by the characterization of Curley’s wife in Of Mice and Men. As stated between George and Candy about Curley marrying a ‘tart’, “He ain’t the first,” said George. “There’s plenty done that.” (Steinbeck 28). This suggests that George believes that many men have made the lack of better judgement marrying a ‘tart’, therefore saying most

Crooks, the cripple stable buck, not to mention his dark skin, is constantly used in scenarios of being shunned and altogether is plagued with less social liberties. An example of this dynamic being how he reacts to the tongue lashing from Curley’s wife. Crooks had reduced himself to nothing. There was no personality, no ego-nothing to arouse either like or dislike, He said, “Yes ma’am.” (Steinbeck 81) . The reaction derived from Crooks is rather peculiar and shows how Curley’s wife, a woman without a name, even still has power because of her relations to the man in charge. Another example of Crooks’ privileges is: Crooks could leave his things about and being a cripple, he was more permanent than the other men, and he had accumulated more possessions than he could carry on his back (Steinbeck 66-67). Therefore as a cripple he has the bittersweet privilege of deserving work out of pity, but was also pinned to the same position for the rest of his