The Role Of Hope In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

Imagine you are a man during the 1930’s, you have no family and you need money so you work as a rancher, you are constantly moving from place to place alone, no family, no permanent home. You are lonely and poor, life as a rancher is hard and rough but you keep doing it, why? because of the hope that someday you will make enough money as a rancher to have your own house. Hope gets people through hard things as seen in Of Mice and Men.
Pale yellow which is the color of hope best conveys John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men through the many characters’ different hopes and dreams for the future.
Lennie and George hold onto the hope throughout the entire book that they will one day have land of their own. George often brings up the fact that Lennie and him are different from the other ranchers because they have something they are working towards,
“Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place. They come to a ranch an' work up a stake and then they go into town and blow their stake, and the first thing you know they're poundin' their tail on some other ranch. They ain't got nothing to look ahead to… With us it ain't like that. We got a future...” (Steinbeck 13-14). As seen in this quote, the two of them are always working toward a goal, the goal of living on their own, together. Through all of Lennie’s mistakes-such as him and George needing to run away from Weed because he touched a woman's dress and she accused him of rape-that put them back and all of the hard work they endure, they are always thinking of that ranch, the hope of having that one day and only working for themselves helps them get through all of that. “...We'd jus' live there. We'd belong there. There wouldn't be no more runnin' round the country and gettin' fed by a Jap cook. No, sir, we'd have our own place where we belonged and not sleep in no bunkhouse," (Steinbeck 57). As shown in this quote, they long to one day live on their own and it is the promise or hope that that will one day happen that keeps them working and moving from ranch to ranch.
Lennie and George aren’t the only people on the ranch who hope to be somewhere else.
Curley’s wife always hoped to be an actress and even after she was married and settled down on the ranch, she still had those hopes of being famous in the back of her head. For example, when she gets annoyed with Lennie and Crooks she begins bragging about almost being in shows when she was younger, “ ‘...Whatta I care? You bindle bums think you're so damn good. Whatta ya think I am, a kid? I tell ya I could of went with shows. Not jus' one, neither. An' a guy tol' me he could put me in pitchers…’ She was breathless with indignation. ‘—Sat'iday night. Ever'body out doin' som'pin'. Ever'body! An' what am I doin'? Standin' here talkin' to a bunch of bindle stiffs—a nigger an' a dum-dum and a lousy ol' sheep—an' likin' it because they ain't nobody else.’ " (Steinbeck 78). However, as seen above, that bragging soon turns into resentment toward her younger self for never following her dreams. Through this we can see that even though she is stuck in a lousy marriage on a random ranch and treated as less than everybody else simply because she is a woman, she still hopes to make it out and get to perform and be in
shows.
Crooks, the only black worker on the ranch, simply hopes to be treated the same as the other men. While all the men sleep in one bunk house together, Crooks is forced to sleep alone in a small hut next to a pile of horse poop. He isn’t even allowed inside the other men’s bunkhouse. He is allowed to play horseshoes with them outside of it, but those are about all of his privileges on the ranch. The only time the reader ever really meets Crooks is when Lennie goes to his room because he is bored. Later, Candy, an old man on the ranch, comes into the room later looking for Lennie and makes a comment about never being in Crook’s room before to which Crooks responds darkly, "Guys don't come into a colored man's room very much.” (Steinbeck 75). It is quite obvious in this quote that Crooks has resentment toward the men on the ranch because he is not allowed to do some of the things they do and because they don’t treat him as an equal. I think this is why he was so friendly towards Lennie, Lennie didn’t understand why color made anybody different, he was so simple-minded that he was able to ignore the complexity of skin color and how it made people be treated differently. I also think Crooks was friendly toward him because he felt that he was better than him or at least equal and that made him feel empowered and strong, when he usually felt pushed down and weak around the other men on the ranch. We see this when he says, "This is just a nigger talkin', an' a busted-back nigger. So it don't mean nothing, see?" (Steinbeck 71). He has been put under others so much throughout his life that he actually believes that he is worth less than the other ranch workers who are white. Through these emotions of his we can see that he only wants to be treated equally. His resentment toward the fact that he sleeps in a different room, his warmness towards Lennie, another ridiculed man, and his feelings that he himself is less than the other men show that he hopes to be treated the same way as all the other ranch workers.
Through all of these characters we see a pale yellow of hope seeping into their minds and their futures. In Lennie and George’s goal of having a house, in Curley’s wife’s wishes to be an actress, and in Crook’s dreams to simply be treated equally we see the same pale yellow, we see the same hope.