Felipe Cabral English GCSE Coursework - Essay 10/11/2007
“How does life on the ranch reflect the social issues of 1930’s America?”
1930’s America; a time when people didn’t have the choice of a happy life.
We’ll be discussing how the ranch from the novel “Of Mice and Men” can be seen as a microcosm of the American society during the 1930’s. The Great Depression which happened because of the Wall Street crash contributed to hard times in the county. After this incident, most families in America lost all their savings and were forced to migrate around the country in search of jobs to raise just enough money to buy food. Most of the families were separated. This meant that people became lonely and were forced to take any jobs they could find. Most men worked in ranches; they had to cope with a very simple life and very little money. Due to this, the ranches also owned their own depression, affecting everyone in difficult ways. 1930’s America was a time that will always be remembered
The plight of the migrant workers was to keep their confidence and carry on working until they could save just enough money to survive. John Steinbeck who lived in 1930’s America created a novel called “Of Mice and Men” based on two men who migrated in search of jobs and had their lives changed at a ranch, in California. By looking at this novel we can really concentrate on how hard it was for migrant workers, and can understand how the depression deeply affected ranches around America. These workers had to accept that they were in a time when the strongest and fittest of people prevailed upon the less powerful and weakest. The weakest had to cope with a hard life and were sometimes eliminated from the society with loneliness and even death. As a great example of this, Steinbeck created a character in his novel called Candy, who was old and had lost his left hand in an accident. Therefore he wasn’t much useful in the ranch and was given the job of floor sweeping. The only friend he had was his old sheep dog which was beside him everywhere he went. Due to the lack of importance in the ranch, the dog was forcibly killed by another member of the ranch; Carlson. In the book, Carlson mentions the dog as useless. By this, we can see how the fittest ruled the society and the weakest didn’t have a chance to put forth his opinion.
