Racism In John Steinbeck's 'Of Mice And Men'

In the 1930s John Steinbeck wrote the novella 'Of Mice and Men '. Steinbeck wrote the novella to highlight how society at the time was racist, sexist , ageist and against people with disabilities. 'The American Dream ' appeared to be inaccessible due to what the title connotes and because of the 'Great Depression ', which arose after economic issues (the wall street crash) and eco logical (dust bowls caused by over farming) began, adding to the strain on society. 'The American Dream ' was believed to be that if you put in the effort and work then you could achieve anything although for many people there dream was futile and due to the harsh and violent environment it would stay that way . Each character in the novella represents a certain group of people such as Candy who symbolises how old people were treated he also symbolises how people with physical disabilities were treated worse than 'normal ' people.

The first introduction to violence in the novella is when we find out Lennie has a dead mouse in his pocket "I didn 't kill it …show more content…
The first time Lennie meets Crooks, Crooks takes a dark pleasure by taunting him and saying that George might not come back this causes Lennie to go into a deep panic and results in a hulk like rage causing Crooks to regret his previous words and to open up to him about how lonely he is and that his father owned a chicken farm, the importance of him telling Lennie that his father 'owned ' a chicken farm is that it is implying that he no longer has it and it could have been taken away from him. In crooks ' room he has a book filled with the laws of California this demonstrates that Crooks is forced in having to learn the laws because he has to know his rights so that he doesn 't get lynched, this shows that during that time it was so racist that he is forced in having to learn the laws due to the crooked human rights