If you had a vagina in John Steinbeck 's Of Mice and Men, a novel about extremely different people with their own individual disabilities and facing seemingly unending hardships, you were at a complete disadvantage to your male counterparts.John Steinbeck utilizes Curley 's wife to portray the views of someone who is utterly lonely, unable to apprehend her dream, and constantly oppressed due to the sole fact that she is a woman, demonstrating how the sexism in society leads to women not being able to participate in the American dream.
One could say that Crooks, the only black character in the book has it harder, but this is not true. Although he is alone, he is not nearly as alone as Curley’s wife. Crooks gets to work with the other men during the day and sometimes spends time with them in the evenings. Although many men are mean to Crooks he has friends that he can confide in. Curley’s wife however, has no one. Whenever she tries to talk to someone she is quickly shut down and shunned.The only person she has is Curley, who is a very cruel and does not let her talk to anyone as seen here “I can’t talk to nobody but Curley. Else he gets mad. How’d you like not to talk to nobody?”(Steinbeck 52) It could also be said that Crooks will never achieve his dream because of the fact that he is black. This is also not true because Crooks was very close to achieving his dream of running his own frm, it didn’t end up happening because of another characters mistakes. Curley’s wife on