OF MICE AND MEN by John Steinbeck

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OF MICE AND MENby John Steinbeck
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What is a Bindle stiff-

• A Bindle stiff is a single migrant laborer,
  generally white males, recruited to work on a
  temporary basis during the harvest season in the
  1930s.

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Life of a bindle stiff
Bindlepackage
Stiffhobo

• The term bindle stiff emerged to describe
  these migrant workers who carried their
  belongings in a bundle and moved from place to
  place.

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Daily life

• Average pay 2.50 - 3.00 a day
• Obviously this is not enough to build any type of
  savings
• As a result, these workers remained trapped in
  their low paying and dead end unproductive
  positions.

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Ranch life

• Most of these bindle stiffs were farm labor that
  drifted from ranch to ranch living in awful
  accommodations picking the harvest frantically
  from sunrise to sunset.
• Ranches typically had a bunkhouse, and a cook
  house for the laborers.
• Bindle stiffs lived in the bunkhouse which they
  shared with other hired hands.
• Nights involved homemade entertainment on the
  confines of the ranch. They might venture into to
  town only 1 night a week because towns were
  usually too far away and they really didnt have
  any transportation or money to spend anyway.

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Of Mice and Men

• The novella focuses on these white single migrant
  workers before the arrival of the migrant
  families during the Great Depression.
• The Novella shows the mens hopes and their
  feelings of hopelessness that was commonly felt
  by bindle stiffs.
• This class of people were previously ignored by
  society, yet they numbered over 125,000 men
  during this time in our history.
• Clearly, this large group was worthy of national
  attention!!!!
• In fact at the end of the novella, Carlson
  demonstrates he is a participant in a faulty
  society when he asks Curley, Now what suppose
  is eatin them two guys. He clearly is oblivious
  about love, mercy, relationships or problems
  currently plaguing our society at that time.
• So Steinbeck greatly influenced public awareness
  of these Migrant families and bindle stiffs
  poverty and despair with his work.

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Hiring practices of the Depression era.

• Enormous competition for jobs existed.
• Management could manipulate their employees.
• Workers were forced to accept unfair pay because
  many other hungry workers waited anxiously for
  their jobs.

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Debt

• Most new arrivals on these ranches were broke.
• Employers operated stores which allowed the
  laborers to purchase food and other necessities
  on credit.
• Thus, the laborer must work a second day to pay
  for the first, and so on. So the workers were
  continually in debt.

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• Steinbeck uses this two characters as an example
  of workers who were continually in debt.
• George and Lennie, for instance, must stay on
  this ranch because they have no money.
• For two bits Id shove out of here, says George
  (page 33). This statement is made by George
  after he anticipates trouble with Curly.
• This shows the impossible situation he and Lennie
  are continually trapped. Staying means trouble
  but leaving means starvation and hopelessness.

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Society

• No government programs and welfare services
  existed
• No regulations on businesses and institutions
• Families responsible to care for their elderly
• Racism and segregation enforced during this
  period in our history
• No laws of equality truly existed
• Stereotypes are found throughout this novella.
  Society truly believed in these stereotypes and
  at this time in our nations history which causes
  many real problems in society.

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Social Problems of the Time

• Social protest of inequality that existed for
  the
• Women
• Handicap
• Race
• Age

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A Womans Role

• In the early 1900s men and women were generally
  restricted to separate spheres of life.
• Traditionalist values placed women in the home in
  charge of domestic duties.
• Men where the only ones accepted in the
  workplace. Most wives did not work.
• The common accepted feeling during this time was
  that married women were supported by their
  husbands and ought not to take jobs outside of
  the home that rightfully belonged to men.

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Progressive Era

• Marriage remained a primary goal for most women
  in the Progressive Era.
• Some women did not feel fulfilled in this role.
• The accepted notion of that time was that the
  familys well-being takes priority over the
  individual womans needs and interests.
• Often women were forced to remain in love less
  marriages and suffer domestic violence.
• Society still harshly judged the act of divorce
  or separation and those who undertook it.

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Curleys wife

• Curleys wife in Of Mice and Men enjoys little
  freedom.
• She is trapped on her husbands ranch and not
  even allowed friends.
• In the mens eyes, she is Curlys property, and
  although she is lonely, that is her husbands
  business and not theirs.

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Curleys wife

• In Of Mice and Men, Curleys wife displays a
  restlessness associated with other women of her
  situation and status.
• The attitude matched those of real life farm
  wives studied during that time, which were
  filled with complaints of isolation, and lack of
  friends and entertainment.
• Instead of providing Curleys wife with the
  excitement of a new life, her marriage has
  replaced her dreams of being an actress with the
  reality of a daily life filled with loneliness,
  boredom and house work.
• Curleys wife represents the type of unhappiness
  that would continue for many married women until
  their role in society broadened.

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The mentally retarded

• By 1915, mental retardation had caught public
  attention.
• It was considered the most significant
  large-scale social problem in our nation at the
  time.
• People were frightened and often at times
  displayed hostile attitudes towards the mentally
  challenged.

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Handicapped

• sterilization of the retarded/ neutered
• segregated them from the larger population by
  placing them in horrific institutions which did
  unregulated testing etc .
• No government agency regulated these
  institutions, so they were often horrific place
  where atrocities occurred

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Laws

• Laws disallowing marriage between mentally
  challenged people were passed by thirty-nine
  states.
• Coupled with widespread sterilization, the laws
  were designed to limit the population of mentally
  retarded.
• This scheme, designed to keep the population
  genetically superior, was eventually accepted by
  twenty-three states- and later, Nazi Germany.
  They borrowed the practice from USA

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Lennie

• In Of Mice and Men, Lennie portrays an exception
  to the rule of institutionalization for mentally
  disabled people.
• But societys inability to accept him, as
  illustrated by his friends fear that Lennie will
  be murdered for his accidental crime,
  demonstrates a refusal of this world to accept
  people who are different.
• Lennies problem is that he cant comprehend the
  rules that govern society. When it becomes
  apparent that he never will, he is killed.

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Age

• Elderly Candy is portrayed as a weak and passive
  man relying on the pity of others. He has no
  where to go when he can no longer support himself
• His dog seems to become part of him as they have
  been together for so long, Candy is all alone
  except for his dog.
• This practically worthless animal is on its last
  legs and is doing nothing for either of them
  being around. The dog symbolizes Candy.
• Candy is aging and not really capable of much of
  the hard work and action that the others carry
  out, hes not much use to society either.
• In a way, Candy is a guide for George and Lennie
  as he has been round the farm for quite some
  time, he is aware and nosy.

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Race

• Blacks live oppressed and as out casts especially
  in the South during this period.
• Black Americans harbored a legitimate fear of
  being lynched, since of the vast majority were
  black.
• White Goddess concept
• Mob justice is mentioned in Of Mice and Men in an
  exchange between Curleys wife and Crooks when
  she tells him that she could have him lynched
  whenever she wanted.
• This statement, which she refers to is quite
  plausible that such a fate could have befallen
  the black man, Crooks.

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Law, Order, and good ole fashion Vigilante
Justice.

• The illegal killing of a suspect by mob violence,
  represents a horrifying reality of the era.
• Mobs reacted using violence for real or imagined
  crimes at their own discretion, not waiting for
  legal justice to take its course.
• All that mattered to the lynchers was their own
  determination of an outsiders guilt.
• Such lynchings were usually representative of
  racial tensions in society.

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Frontier Justice Prevails

• Ranch hands belonged to remote communities that
  were basically immune to official law
  enforcement.
• The isolation and size of the ranches allowed
  frontier justice to prevail.
• It was left up to the farm owners themselves to
  maintain order over the migrant workers who
  arrived for the harvests.
• Once a decision had been made about a mans
  supposed guilt, punishment would be extracted by
  the mob.
• Such mobs were capable of atrocious disfigurement
  of their victims.
• There were cases of mutilation-toes being cut off
  and the body doused in gasoline and then burned.

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Crooks

• Crooks, the black employee who lives apart from
  the others.
• Crooks tries to communicate the loneliness he
  feels as a social outcast.
• Crooks gets Lennie to spill his dream of a
  private farm, and Crooks himself begins dreaming
  of an escape from the sad realities of his life.
• Curleys wife steps into the doorway looking for
  companionship and their argument culminates in
  her threatening Crooks with a future lynching
  should he not behave.
• Crooks resigns himself to his luckless destiny.

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Allegorical Names

• Character Name Meaning/ Source

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Themes

• The American Dream/ Broken Dreams George and
  Lennie dream to be able to own a place of their
  own and be their own bosses
• Loneliness e.g. Candy's only companion, his dog,
  is killed
• Friendship George shooting Lennie to help him
  escape from a brutal lynching
• Innocence Lennie's not understanding why he
  shouldn't enter Crooks' room
• Discrimination e.g. Crooks, as a ranch outcast,
  lives in a room all alone
• Social protest/ Inequality Alienation, the
  treatment of old and/or non-productive ones,
  racial, gender, handicap prejudice

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George and Lennie

• Two UNCOMMON bindle stiffs
• 1) They share a common dream of farm ownership.
  AMERICAN DREAM THEME
• 2) Unlike the others who travel alone, these 2
  have each other. FRIENDSHIP THEME

• Two Stupid Dogs (1993)

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Point of View

• First person
• third person objective/limited.
• third person omniscient
• The point of view of the novel is clearly third
  person objective. We never enter a person's mind,
  all the characters are described by the way they
  act and what they say. This choice of point of
  view makes Of Mice and Men relatively similar to
  a play for the theatre.

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"To a Mouse, on turning up her Nest with the
Plough" by Robert Burns, November, 1785

• But, Mousie, thou art no thy laneIn proving
  foresight may be vainThe best laid schemes o'
  mice an' menGang aft agley,An' lea'e us nought
  but grief an' painFor promis'd joy.Still thou
  art blest, compar'd wi' me!The present only
  toucheth theeBut, och! I backward cast my
  e'eOn prospects drear!An' forward, tho' I canna
  see,I guess an' fear!
• Notes 1. Burns's brother Gilbert is responsible
  for the story that the poem was composed while
  the poet was ploughing, after he had turned up a
  mouse's nest and had saved the mouse from the
  spade of the boy who was holding the horses.
  sleekit sleek. 4. bickerin brattle hurrying
  scamper. 5. laith loth. 6. pattle a small
  long-handled spade for removing clay from the
  ploughshare. 13. whyles sometimes. 14. mawn
  must. 15. daimen occasional.icker ear of
  corn. a thrave twenty-four sheaves. 17. lave
  rest. 20. silly feeble. 21. big build. 22.
  foggage coarse grass. 24. snell piercing. 34.
  But without. house or hald house or
  habitation cf. Address to the Deil, 104. 35.
  thole endure. 36. cranreuch hoar-frost. 37.
  no thy lane not alone. 40. a-gley amiss.

• Wee, sleeket, cowrin, tim'rous beastie, Oh, what
  a panic's in thy breastie!Thou need na start awa
  sae hastyWi' bickerin brattle!I wad be laith to
  rin an' chase theeWi' murd'ring pattle!I'm
  truly sorry man's dominionHas broken Nature's
  social union,An' justifies that ill
  opinionWhich makes thee startleAt me, thy poor
  earth-born companion,An' fellow-mortal!I doubt
  na, whyles, but thou may thieveWhat then? poor
  beastie, thou maun live!A daimen icker in a
  thrave'S a sma' requestI'll get a blessin wi'
  the lave,An' never miss 't!Thy wee bit housie,
  too, in ruin!Its silly wa's the win's are
  strewin!An' naething, now, to big a new ane,O'
  foggage green!An' bleak December's winds
  ensuinBaith snell an' keen!
• Thou saw the fields laid bare an' wast,An' weary
  winter comin fast,An' cozie here beneath the
  blastThou thought to dwell,Till crash! the
  cruel coulter pastOut thro' thy cell.
• That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibbleHas cost
  thee monie a weary nibble!Now thou's turn'd out
  for a' thy trouble,But house or hald,To thole
  the winter's sleety dribbleAn' cranreuch cauld!