Steinbeck’s protest in Crooks’ character is aimed directly at African Americans who feel about themselves in the way that Crooks feels about himself. To me it is obvious that this is aimed at the African Americans rather than the white Americans because of something Steinbeck includes in Crooks’ character. “. . . he had books, too; a tattered dictionary and a mauled copy of the California civil code for 1905.” Because he is alone, Crooks is able to read and he is probably the most intelligent person on the ranch. The other ranch workers seldom have a book in their possession; the most they are likely to have is a copy of a magazine. What Steinbeck implies with these possessions is that African Americans are more intellectual readers than white Americans. Steinbeck does not think that the white Americans can change their ways, but he does think that the African Americans can stop putting up with it.
When Crooks realizes that Lenny means no harm he invites him to "Come on in and set a while" Lenny begins to talk about George and his dream, it makes Crooks reminisce to his childhood which he looks on as a kind of paradise. "The white kids come to play at our place, an' sometimes I went to play with them and some of them were pretty nice. My ol' man didn't like that. I never knew till long later why he didn't like that. But I know now". Crooks' didn't experience racism directly in his childhood, making his current situation even worse. Because Crooks didn’t experience racism in his childhood he grew up thinking that the world was a happy place, however, now he is in his adulthood he is discovering the ‘evil within’. However because Crooks can remember a time when everybody was happy he is now lonely, as he is the only African American on the ranch. Crooks is fascinated by the strength of the friendship of Lenny and George, especially how close they are. Crooks said, "Well, s'pose, jus' s'pose he don't come back. What'll you do then?" Crooks asks these questions because he does not have any friends. Crooks goes on to talk about his loneliness "A guy needs somebody-to be near him” He whined: “A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you” he cried, “I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick." Crooks is looking for sympathy, he is so incredibly lonely even to the point to saying that loneliness can make you ill.
However, Crooks is not the only mistreated character on the ranch. The next section of the essay is focussed on Candy and how his age and physical disability separate him from the rest of the work force. Steinbeck shows Candy as a victim of the ranch in several ways. Candy’s discrimination was caused entirely at the ranch’s blame. Candy got his hand caught in a machine and the only reason he still has a job at the ranch is either because of compassion from the boss, or more likely because they were worried that if they didn’t give him a job then he would pursue legal routes for compensation. That is why the boss of the ranch let him keep his job, and gave him $250 to keep him quiet. Because Candy is not allowed to take part in the same tasks as the rest of the work force he does not bond with the rest of the men in the same way as they bond with each other. He is therefore alone in his misery. He does however, have one companion. His old dog. This dog is important in Candy’s life because, “I been around him so much I never notice how he stinks.” Candy has had that dog since it was a pup and he had many good memories with it. He can remember when he used to herd sheep with him. To him this dog is a good friend, as he has got older he became less of a working dog and more of a dog of compassion, it’s only job was to keep Candy happy. Candy has bonded with that dog in a way he was never able to with the other men, therefore when the other men wanted to kill the dog because of how it smelt and, “to put it out of it’s misery” Candy was reluctant to comply. However because he is just an old man they bullied him into making a decision, a bit like conmen would persuade old lonely people into spending their life savings on something that isn’t worth anything.
When the dog dies Candy’s only friend dies with it. He goes into solitary confinement and refuses to talk to anybody. To him it must feel like he has been betrayed and the message that Steinbeck is trying to put across here is that you must never give up on your friends, they may be old, unfit, miserable and other people may not like them but you must always protect your friends and stick up for them. When Candy’s dog dies he searches for new friends and he starts to take an interest in George and Lenny. George and Lenny’s relationship is similar to Candy’s relationship which he had with the dog. George is the master, obviously superior yet sometimes powerless over his loyal dog, Lenny. When Candy discovers the ‘dream farm’ he wants to place his trust in George and Lenny. He offers them his life savings, the payoff he received for his hand and his monthly wages. In this gesture he was not only handing over his life savings, he was also handing over his life.
Candy is one of the first people George and Lenny met when they arrived at the ranch and therefore they have some trust in him. Because Candy has been at the ranch for a long time he will have seen people come and go, and all of them will have had their ‘dream farm’. But George and Lenny are the first people that Candy wishes to trust and commit his life to. I think that this is maybe because the relationships between George and Lenny, and Candy and his dog are so similar. Steinbeck is trying to tell the readers of this book that you cannot live your dreams unless you face reality first. George learnt a lot from Lenny, later in the book when it is time for Lenny to die, George does not let Curley shoot his best friend. Instead he shoots Lenny himself, because Candy said that he’d wished that he hadn’t let someone else shoot his dog, he would have preferred to shoot it himself to provide himself with closure.
At this point in the essay I have covered racial hatred and discriminations against the elderly and the physically disabled. It is at this point in my essay however that I wish to change the focus of the essay to Curley’s wife. Already I have already touched on the most important issue I feel with Curley’s wife. It is simply that she has no name, she is known only as Curley’s Wife or in one case as, “You seen a girl around here?” At that point in the novel it would have been easier to use her name but that would personalise her. To Curley she was just a possession. The moment George first saw her; he knew that she was a potential source of trouble. Lenny was falling for her beauty but George knew he was falling into a trap. Curley’s wife caused a lot of trouble. Because she had no job on the ranch other than being Curley’s ‘trophy wife’ she had a lot of spare time. She spent that time going in and out of the bunk houses and had grown a reputation of being quite flirtatious and tells the other men that, “nobody can blame you for looking.” However with a husband like Curley people could be blamed for looking and Curley made sure that nobody got off lightly. Curley felt like he had something to prove towards Lenny, maybe it was because of his size or maybe it was because he didn’t like newcomers but Curley had something against Lenny from the very beginning.
Curley’s wife was like a loaded mouse trap and Lenny was the mouse. To bait him closer she used her beauty and his dumbness to lure him in to the ‘cheese’ and then she sprang down on him like the trap would on a mouse. She isolated his body from his mind; she separated him from George. When George was socialising with the other workers, something which he found hard to do with Lenny around him, George thought that Lenny was alone with the puppies. He was, however, only half right. He was not alone. Curley’s wife pounced on Lenny, unsuspecting of the consequences. She invited him to stroke her hair but she was just digging a hole for herself. When she asked him to let go he replied by breaking her neck. She was not the innocent party in the murder. She had spent her life on the ranch flirting and advertising herself with the other men. However the other men were clever enough to see the trap.
Steinbeck’s message in this character is that you should always have a circle of people around you which you trust. Curley’s wife only had Curley, so she felt owned by him. Curley took advantage of this and thought of her only as a possession that should ‘stay at home where she belongs.’ Curley’s wife was bored with her husband, she longed for a life, ‘in the pictures,’ something which she had been promised before she married Curley but it was something that her mother had denied from her. Her loneliness eventually caused her to become very interactive with the other men and that eventually caused her death. In conclusion of my study of Curley’s wife I believe that the main issue for her is her possession, she is trying to fight against Curley’s ownership and she also trying to reach her dreams. Steinbeck is trying to tell the readers that they shouldn’t be owned and they should always try to achieve the most in life, he is protesting against people doing nothing and saying that they cannot achieve any more.
Curley’s wife inevitably brought her death upon herself but Lenny’s death was simply to protect him. Lenny may have acted like a child throughout his life but he has a heart of gold. When toddlers are first learning about things they like to put them inside their mouths, its how they learn. For Lenny he likes to feel things with his hands. Both of these learning methods have one bad side affect. Because toddlers have learnt to crawl they go everywhere and place things in their mouths. But because they are not stable on their legs they might fall over and choke on the obstruction in their mouth. That can be deadly. The way Lenny learns can also be deadly, in Weed it was mistaken for rape and that explains why George and Lenny had to run away to Salinas. The reason they had to leave Weed was because of Lenny not knowing his own strength. At the beginning of the book, on the way to the new ranch, Lenny promises George that he won’t forget and he implies that he won’t get into any trouble. There are signs however to show George that Lenny hasn’t changed, firstly there is the incident with the mice, Lenny kills them without knowing what he is doing. Then there is Curley’s hand. Lenny clearly doesn’t know his own strength but George chooses to ignore the signs. Eventually these moments of aggression lead to the death of Lenny’s puppy and to Curley’s wife.
Lenny is misinterpreted at the ranch, Curley thinks that just because he is big he must be a threat and that makes Curley think that he has got something to prove in beating him up. Because of Lenny’s strength no-one wants to work with him. When he is loading sacks onto a trailer the people he is working with can’t keep up and they ask the boss if they can do something else saying, “We can’t keep up, that big oaf is going to kill us.” Lenny is pretty dumb. At times he is acting like a teenager and making the people around him think less and less of him. His childish manner and the fact that he doesn’t know what he is doing gets him into situations in which he needs George’s assistance to get him out. In the fight scene with Curley, Lenny doesn’t lay a finger on him. Instead he keeps asking George for help, “Make ‘um let me alone, George.” In the end Lenny’s childish behaviour cause the death of Curley’s wife and he remembers the instructions that George had given him and he had promised not to forget. He went where he was told and then George arrived.
Lenny had made a massive mistake, something for which he was going to pay for with his life. George was in a terrible position. What should he do? Let Lenny be hunted down and slowly killed by Curley, or do the brave thing and kill Lenny himself? By having George shoot Lenny, Lenny died suddenly. Curley would have shot him in his stomach area to have him die a slow and painful death. Lenny didn't have to suffer the pain of death and George wouldn't have to stand there and have Lenny and the other ranch workers ask questions about why he didn't do anything to prevent Curley from shooting him. When Lenny died, he was thinking about the dream. This made Lenny happy because he was "gonna tend the rabbits". That means his last thoughts before he died were happy ones of a farm, a little shack and rabbits eating the alfalfa. If George didn't shoot Lenny and Curley did, Lenny would be thinking about how he killed Curley's wife and that Curley was really mad at him. That thought wouldn't make Lenny happy and George knew that so he shot him.
It was right for George to shoot Lenny because Lenny died suddenly, he was thinking about the dream and he was shot by a friend. George would have never forgiven himself if he just watched Curley kill Lenny. Instead, he took Candy's advice when Candy told him how he would have liked to shoot his best friend instead of having Carlson shoot him. George was obviously thinking of what was best for Lenny when he shot him. Steinbeck’s final message in his book, “Of Mice and Men,” was that it is better to die surrounded by your friends thinking of all the good in your life than to die with your enemies thinking of everything you’ve done wrong.
In conclusion, I believe that John Steinbeck’s novel, “Of Mice and Men,” is a protest statement because it touches upon many key life issues and addresses one or more of the parties involved in these issues. The racial hatred that Steinbeck addressed would be felt by many African Americans throughout America, and they would realise that it was wrong and they should not live with it. The women who feel owned by men who read this book would probably realise that they should live up to their dreams rather than having their place in the home. The cripples and elderly who read this book must have felt sorry at the fact that they were being bullied into making a hard decision that they did not want to make and the mentally retarded people that can read this book might be interested to know that it is not their fault. However Lenny’s character affects more than just the real Lenny’s in the world. It sends a message to others, people who have to live with mentally retarded people every day, it tells them to understand what they are going through and to take care as Lenny like characters may not fully understand what they mean. This book can be summed up as a statement, perhaps even as a leaflet to inform people of the hardships of the nineteenth century America.
