Inequalities In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

Inequal
Imagine living in a world where people are working incredibly physically demanding jobs for only 25 cents per hour. Where women are treated like objects and 60% of the workforce is unemployed. That was the setting in John Steinbeck’s novella, Of Mice and Men. The two main characters are Lennie and George, and they are field workers in California. They travel together, which most men moving around for jobs didn’t do. Lennie and George were close friends and had plans to own a house and live off the land together. But in their time working they faced a lot on inequalities in society like women not being treated equally, the disabled being treated like small children, and the poor being exploited for their labor. I feel that the reader can learn a valuable lesson in this book how to not be manipulated and exploited as well as teaching that one needs to look at situations from another point of view before they act or judge.
In Steinbeck’s novella, there is a running theme of inequality between characters. Curley’s wife is often called a tramp or a tart, “‘Jesus, what a tramp,’ he said. “So that’s what Curley picks for a wife.’” (Steinbeck

The economy was so terrible at that time that people would work long, hard hours for low wages and had so little to look forward to that they would take the little money they earned and spend it all in one night. “‘Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They got no place. They come to a ranch an’ work up a 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.’” (Steinbeck 14) Farm owners had many people who were in need of work, and “any work was better than no work” so they could pay their workers as little as they