Of Mice and Men

In the novel “Of Mice and Men”, John Steinbeck creates an allegorical story about life during the Great Depression. “Of Mice and Men” is a novel about two migrant workers – George and Lennie - who try to achieve their dreams of earning money to buy their own ranch. However, the people at George and Lennie’s job are not very pleasant as they fail to show empathy towards each other. Steinbeck presents the overall base theme of the importance of empathy by developing themes of prejudice, human cruelty and loneliness. Steinbeck shows that without the ability to understand each other, characters will misunderstand and create assumptions towards one another.
In the novel, Steinbeck depicts themes of prejudice. Firstly, because of his race, Crooks is isolated from the rest of the characters. For example, Crooks is not “wanted in the bunkhouse” (Page 68) because he is black, which makes him isolated from the rest of the characters. Furthermore, Crooks “[has] his bunk in the harness room” (page 66); indicating that he has to live alone because he is not welcome to stay at the bunkhouse. Moreover, Crooks mentions when all the other men “play cards in [the bunkhouse], I can’t play because I’m black.” (Page 68), which shows inequality for Crooks. Moreover, apart from Slim and Lennie, none of the characters call Crooks by his real name; they all refer to him as the “stable buck” or the “[n word]”. In this way, the characters are showing no empathy for Crooks; they do no respect him because he is a black person. Secondly, the men show prejudice towards Curley’s wife because of her gender. For example, Curley’s wife does not have a name in the story; she is just referred to as “Curley’s wife”, indicating that she is an insignificant character. In addition, the characters stereotype her as someone who they do not want to associate with. For example, Curley’s wife is often called names: Candy calls her a “tart” (page 28), George calls her a “tramp” and “jail bait” (page 32) and...