A novel by John Steinbeck
Author's Point of View: John Steinbeck
Yearning for land is the theme of the novel. There are obvious elements of social protests in the novel such as the plight of migrant workers, racial discrimination, revealed in the abuse and ostracizing of Crooks, the black stableman, by the other ranch hands; the insensitive treatment of old Candy and the social prejudice towards women, exposed through Curley's wife's unhappy married life. The characters in the novel have no visible social awareness of their situation and the cause-source for that. George and Lennie are deprived of their land during the Industrialization Era 1930's. They become the proletarian class whose labor-power the capitalists buy for profit, because the capitalists class owns those means of production. They are heavily exploited by the capitalists, because such kind of economic structure decides the situation in which one class has power over the others. In society this structure is viewed as natural or nothing at all.