Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck is a wonderfully moving, controversial story of friendship, compassion, and tragedy. A modern classic, Of Mice and Men reminds us of the joys and the sorrows of living our lives.
John Steinbeck was the Nobel Prize-winning author of several American classics, the most-famous of which were Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and The Red Pony
The John Steinbeck Bibliographies Page list several sites where one can learn more about the author's life.
Access Indiana Teaching and Learning Center has provided a wonderful site about the man and his works. Very detailed with information about all of the novels.
Many people think this book is about mental retardation and consider Lennie's slowness as a central point in the story.
The ARC posts some very pertinent information regarding mental retardation.
The State of Georgia provides another definition which they use for adoption purposes.
George and Lennie travel from farm to farm looking for work during the Depression years. They suffered the fate of many during the Dust Bowl and the depression.
One of the leaders who made working conditions better for farm workers was Cesar Chavez. Read here about this brave and principled man.
Visit the web site of the United Farm Workers which Chavez helped organize.
Unions
Because of the Depression and the Dust Bowl, many men lost their jobs, and those who held jobs were at the mercy of their employers. Unions were first started to give employees a bargaining chip in negotiating with corporate conglomerates.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., in Jailbird Among those unions was the Industrial Workers of the World also known as the "Wobblies." The Wobblies used songs to organize their movement, and the songs of Joe Hill--the most famous of the Wobbly singers--are included in this site.
Another singer/songwriter who was connected with the Wobblies (more famous than Joe Hill but not as connected to the organization) was Woody Guthrie, father of Arlo Guthrie of "Alice's Restaurant" fame, and the writer of "This Land Is Your Land" (note the lyrics toward the end). The lyrics page lists many songs about the Dust Bowl.
Jobs were scarce for farm hands at the time of the story because thousands of people had fled the Midwest and Plains states during the Dust Bowl, an ecological disaster in which the land became barren.
Of course, this information is simply provided as background to Of Mice and Men in order for the reader to understand the times in which the novel is set. For a more detailed fictional version, read Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, about the Joad family's migration from the Plains to California. Very moving!
To learn more about the Dust Bowl you might begin with The American Experience: Surviving the Dust Bowl, a very comprehehnsive site about the PBS special.
The Day of the Black Blizzard by The Discovery Channel provides an hour-by-hour description of one day during the Dust Bowl.
Drylands has a quick description of this phenomenom.
Voices of the Dust Bowl provides a look at the Migrant Experience of those who left the plains and arrived in California.
Finally, see how the migration of these workers affected the areas to which they moved in a news story by the San Francisco Chronicle of July 11, 1937.
The Great Depression in the early part of the 20th Century plays a background role in this novel. Hard times, few jobs, and no money created situations in which people had to travel looking for work often without a real hope of finding employment. Many people have attributed the Stock Market Carsh of 1929 as the beginning of the depression.
Tracy Yee has put together a nicely written, detailed look at the Crash, its causes, and its effect upon the Depression.
The New York Times presents a great site about the Stock Market Crash of 1929, along with headlines and quotes from its own articles. It also gives inofrmation of events leading up to and following the Crash.
You can find an Associated Press news story from Friday, October 30, at the Washington Post.
Dave's Investment World offers a short overview and several great links about this economic debacle.
Finally, a definition of economic depression.
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"Unions were started as a way of extracting something like economic justice."
HERE is another short biography of Guthrie.
--Woody Guthrie.
The Dust Bowl
These people travelled to southern California where they had heard manual-labor employment was plentiful. These people were treated with disdain and the jobs quickly dried up in a glut of workers.
Stock Market Crash of 1929
to this site.
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