How does Steinbeck present the culture of the migrant worker in the novel?

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How does Steinbeck present the culture of the migrant worker in the novel?

John Steinbeck wrote a novel called Of Mice and Men in 1937.  At the time America was in a period of economic depression following the Wall Street crash. John Steinbeck saw the effects and saw how people had to work hard away from home as migrant workers and this motivated him to write this novel. The story is about 2 migrant workers; Lennie and George. In this essay we will be looking at the character of the migrant workers, their motivations and their dreams for the future. Also we will be looking at the language and then conclude by answering the question ‘how does Steinbeck present the culture of the migrant worker in the novel?

Migrant workers are people who go looking around for work away from home.  They normally do not form long term friendships and normally do not form relationships with women. However in Steinbeck’s novel there are two friends called Lennie and George who have a long term friendship. Lennie is a big man with a mental age of about 8. He always relies on George to tell him what’s right and wrong. We can know that normal migrant workers are lonely. This is supported when George says “guys like us that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. The way he says loneliest, he doesn’t just say lonely he refers to migrant workers as “the loneliest people”. The migrant worker is shown to be lonely by Steinbeck. Also when Candy says “of course I ain’t got family” it tells us that it is usual to not have family and is a common feature shared by the migrant workers.

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Each character in the novel has his or her own characteristics, and this is how Steinbeck presents the culture of the migrant worker. Candy is characterised as being old and useless –the one who they use and Crooks is the lonely and isolated one. We come to know that Crooks feels lonely when he says “books ain’t no good a guy needs somebody to be near him”. The way he says ‘somebody’ means that he is desperate to have a friend and this desperation shows his loneliness. So Steinbeck presents us with different characteristics of each character like anger and ...

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