Is "Of mice and men" a pessimistic story?

Authors Avatar

Is “Of mice and men” a pessimistic story?

Of mice and men is a great novel. It covers many points, racism, sexism, the depression and a lot of others. To some people the novel is an optimistic story to others it is pessimistic. But which is it really?

“Of mice and men” covers a lot of points; the depression with people going from job to job wandering and not getting a long-term job. Lennie and George go from job to job starting from the town, weed and then going to the new ranch. They did not like it there and they were going to leave in a few months to go to a new place. Candy even says to George that you really are here to work then, we have a lot of people come in on the Saturday get their meal and bed until Sunday and then go. This is an example of the depression, candy says he sees a lot of people going from job to job.

Join now!

A lot of the people on the ranch very racist. At that time people were racist and thought nothing of it, they didn’t set out to be nasty however there is once scene with candy’s wife where she gets very nasty.

“Listen, Nigger” “you know what I can do to you if you open your trap” she is meaning that she will have him hung and tell the men that he tried it on.

Those are all bad points, all pessimistic points but there are also good points, optimistic points. Like the friendship between George and Lennie, ...

This is a preview of the whole essay