Essay On The Great Depression In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

In John Steinbeck's of Mice and Men he captures the reality of the great depression and how it affected the american people. This is shown through multiple characters including Crooks, Candy, and Curley's wife. Since Crooks is the only african american on the farm he is the only one suffers from segregation. He is forced to live separately and is prohibited from speaking with the other ranch hands. Candy just like all the other migrant workers on the ranch or on others, suffers from loneliness because there is no way of meeting a female out on the ranch and a female who is not already taken. In the book he also loses his only companion and friend his dog who he has had for the longest time. This dog was the only thing keeping him alive the only thing he loved and it was taken from him by a co worker. Curley's with suffers from being a female and she is the only
on the farm. All of the ranch hands are afraid to talk to her because of her flirtatious ways who can lead on men in the wrong way. Her husband is also the boss's son and can get rid of workers for looking at him the wrong way, because of the way he is no one messes with her in fear of losing their jobs. All of these suffer from either differences from the other ranch workers or because of the lose of their friends and loneliness. Crooks is the most mistreated and disrespected character only because of his skin color.
He is also permanently crippled and is treated no differently because of it he is unable to do anything. Other than being handicapped he is disrespected in the fact that he gets paid less because he is an african american. His co workers also don't talk to him and a prohibited from entering his room. The only time a characters that make an appearance in his room are Lennie and Candy. George also enters his room but only to retrieve lennie and bring him back to the bunk house. “Crooks’s hunger for companionship comes to the surface when he begs to be allowed to join Lennie, Candy, and Georges plan to live on a ranch of their own.”(web) since crooks is the only african american of the ranch he is all alone everyday all the time. No one communicates with him at all because of his skin color. The loneliness overcomes him and makes him have to beg for some sort of freedom from this depression he is living with. But he is also thirsty for revenge because of what they do to him and what he has to go through on a daily
basis.