A BACKGROUND TO… |
Of Mice and Men |
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| The Depression No Help Wanted California or Bust Movin' on 'Funny how you and him string along together' A guy needs somebody |
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Unemployment
brought with it poverty, hunger and homelessness. This period, lasting roughly from 1930
to the start of World War II, is known as the Depression. Firms and banks went bust and
people’s savings disappeared when the banks closed; it was hard to buy food and pay
the rent. A
Philadelphia storekeeper told a reporter of one family he was keeping going on credit: ‘Eleven children in that house. They’ve got
no shoes, no pants. In the house, no chairs. My God, you go in there, you cry, that’s
all.’ The
failure of the First National Bank in one Midwestern town forced twelve families on the
county. When the bank collapsed, one woman, shouting and sobbing, beat on the closed
plate-glass doors; all of her savings from a quarter of a century of making rag rugs had
vanished. ‘We are like the drounding man, grabbing at every thing
that floats by, trying to save what little we have,’ reported a North Carolinian.
In Chicago, a crowd of some fifty hungry men fought over a barrel of garbage set outside
the back door of a restaurant; in Stockton, California, men scoured the city dump near the
San Joaquin River to retrieve half-rotted vegetables. The Commissioner of Charity in Salt
Lake City disclosed that scores of people were slowly starving, because neither county nor
private relief funds were adequate, and hundreds of children were kept out of school
because they had nothing to wear. ‘We have been
eating wild greens,’ wrote a coal miner from Kentucky’s Harlan County.
‘Such as Polk salad. Violet tops, wild onions, forget me not wild lettuce and such
weeds as cows eat as a cow won’t eat a poison weed.’ |
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Here are some photographs and
quotations showing how bad things could be in America during this time:-
‘I come home from the hill every night filled with gloom,’ one Washington correspondent noted. ‘I see on streets filthy, ragged, desperate-looking men, such as I have never seen before.’ By 1933, more than fifteen million workers had lost their jobs. ‘… jobless men made the rounds of factory gates in search of work only to be faced by hastily scrawled signs with the legend ‘NO HELP WANTED’. By the spring of 1934, the legends were painted in gilt letters, as if to make the words more enduring. The embarrassed ‘Sorry buddy’ had given way to the brusque ‘Can’t you read signs?’ men who had once felt certain they could find a job the next day, the next week, the next month, had lost their self assurance. One worker remarked: ‘There is something about the anniversary of your layoff which makes you feel more hopeless.’ Where once they had been confident of their own powers, they now felt impotent. ‘What can a man do?’ asked a jobless Italian-American in New Haven. ‘Dey pulla de string: you move. Dey letta de string loose, you drop.’
___________________________________________________________________________ Gee we looked swell, Full of Yankee Doodle-de-dum. Half a million boots went sloggin’ through Hell, I was the kid with the drum. Say, don’t you remember, they called me Al, It was Al all the time. Say, don’t you remember I’m your pal, Brother, can you spare a dime?” |
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In the country, especially in the
states of Oklahoma and Arkansas, things were almost worse than they were in the cities.
Farmers were being driven off their land, there had been a series of droughts which had
ruined the crops and dried up the soil, and farmers could not afford to re-pay the bank
loans which had helped them buy their farms. When the banks took the land back, whole
families had to move – but where to?
They
headed west to California, where the soil was good and there was supposed to be plenty of
room. Steinbeck
didn’t mention these farmers directly in ‘Of Mice and Men’. Instead, he
makes George and Lennie dream of a little piece of land. The two men, and the others on
the ranch who come to share their dream, represent in a simple way the hunger for land of
many millions of people, and their dreams of being able to settle down. For most of the farmers the dream never came true. They were driven away by the Californians, who thought they were going to be overrun. They had nowhere to go back to, and many lived in vast camps like refugee camps in the California valleys. Steinbeck visited these camps and mentioned them in letters which read towards the end of this booklet. |
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“I got to be fourteen years old,
I went to work on the great lakes at $41.50 a month. I thought: Someday I’m gonna be
a great chef. Rough times, though. It was the year 1929. I would work from five in the
morning till seven at night. Washing dishes, peeling potatoes, carrying heavy garbage. We
would get to Detroit. They was sleepin’ on the docks
and be drunk. Next day he’d be dead. I’d see ‘em floatin’ on the river
where they would commit suicide because they didn’t have anything. White guys and
coloured. I’d get paid off, I’d draw
$21 every two weeks and then comin’ back I’d have to see where I was goin’.
‘Cause I would get robbed. One fella named Scotty, he worked down there, he was
firin’ a boiler. He was tryin’ to send some money home. He’d worked so hard
an’ sweat, the hot fire was cookin’ his stomach. I felt sorry for him. They
killed ‘im and throwed ‘im in the river, trying to get the $15 or $20 from him.
They’d steal and kill each other for fifty cents. I was in chain gangs and been in jail
all over the country. I was in a chain gang in Georgia. I had to pick cotton for four
months, for just hoboin’ on a train. Just for vag. They gave me thirty-five cents and
a pair of overalls when I got out. Just took me off the train, the guard. 1930, during the
Depression, in the summertime. Yes, sir, thirty-five cents, that’s what they gave me. A man had to be on the road. Had to
leave his wife, had to leave his mother, leave his family just to try to get money to live
on. But he think: my dear mother, tryin’ to send her money, worryin’ how
she’s starvin’. The shame I was feeling I walked out
because I didn’t have a job. I said, ‘I’m goin’ out in the world and
get me a job.’ And God help me, I couldn’t get anything. I wouldn’t let
them see me dirty and ragged and I hadn’t shaved. I wouldn’t send ‘em no
picture. I’d write; Dear Mother, I’m
doin’ wonderful and wish you’re all fine.’ That was in Los Angeles and I
was sleeping under some steps and there was some paper over me. This is the slum part,
Negroes lived down there. And my ma, she’d say, ‘Oh, my son is in Los Angeles,
he’s doin’ pretty fair.’ And I was with a bunch of hoboes,
drinkin’ canned heat. I wouldn’t eat two or three days, ‘cause I was too
sick to eat. It’s a wonder I didn’t die. But I believe in God. I went to the hospital there in Los
Angeles. They said, ‘Where do you live?’ I’d say, ‘Travellers Aid,
please send me home.’ Police says, ‘O.K., put him in jail.’ I’d get
ninety days for vag. When I was hoboing I was in jail two-thirds of the time. Instead of
sayin’ five or ten days, they’d say sixty or ninety days. ‘Cause
that’s free labour. Pick the fruit or pick the cotton, then they’d turn you
loose. I had fifteen or twenty jobs. Each job
I would have it would be so hard. From six o’clock at night. I was fixin’ the
meat, cookin’, washin’ dishes and cleaning up. Just like you throwed the ball at
one end and run down and catch it at the other. You’re jack of all trade, you’re
doin’ it all. White chefs are getting’ $40 a week, but I was getting’ $21
for doin’ what they were doin’ and everything else. The poor people had it
rough. The rich people was livin’ off the poor”.
Cesar
Chavez tells this story about when his family were evicted from their farm when they could
not keep up with repayment of a loan to the bank We all of us climbed into an old Chevy that my dad had. And then we were in California, and migratory workers. There were five kids – a small family by those standards. It must have been around ’36. I was about eight. Well, it was a strange life. We had been poor, but we knew every night there was a bed there, and that this was our room. There was a kitchen. It was sort of a settled life, and we had chickens and hogs, eggs and all those things. But that all of a sudden changed. When you’re small, you can’t figure these things out. You know something’s not right and you don’t like it, but you don’t question it and you don’t let that get you down. You sort of just continue to move.
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“FUNNY HOW
YOU AND HIM STRING
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Where our reading and writing waddies get
together with POWDER
RIVER BILL Climb
down, hombres an’ hombresses, an’ rest for a mite. Because as soon as we shake
out the kinks we gotta fork leather again an’ hunt for three missin’ hombres.
Yes siree. This Stampede posse has plumb
important work to do muy pronto! The first of these lost jaspers is
Leonard Olsen o’ Everett, Washington – the second is William La Marr of
Parkersburg, W. Va. – and the third hairpin is none other than our own Dishpan
Charlie! I have a brother that I am very anxious
to see. His name is Leonard Olsen. He is eighteen years of age, blond and about 5 feet 10
inches tall. Haven’t seen him for a number of
years, but would like to locate him, and be responsible for his welfare. I got his
description from the people where he last stayed. I’m sure he reads your WESTERN
TRAILS so it would help a lot. Thanks
very much, Yours, We sure will take a look-see, Louis, an’
do all we can to corral that lost kid brother of yours. An’ you let us know how you
make out on your private hunt. For if he doesn’t show up at seein’ this, we
o’ the Stampede will keep right on
lookin’ for him. Yuh betcha!
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Now
hombres an’ hombresses, curly-haired Miss Mabel here is kind enough to say a few
words on behalf o’ William La Marr’s mother who is worried ‘bout him. Step right up, Miss Mabel
Parkersburg,
W. Va. The WESTERN TRAILS is the best magazine that
I ever read. Here’s my description – I have
grey eyes, brown curly hair, five feet six inches tall. Tip the scales at 133 pounds, fair
complexion. Oh come on
boys and girls both, and write to this lonesome factory lass. Bill, won’t you please tell William La Marr to
write to his mother. She is very worried about him. She lives at the same place. Most
sincerely
Sure thing, Miss Mabel, we’d be plumb
glad to scout around for this La Marr maverick. If he takes a look-see in at the W. T.
spread our buckaroos will sure talk with him an’ tell him ‘bout his mother.
Well, so you want some Pen Pards? The quickest way to get ‘em is to amble over to the
Pen Pards’ bunkhouse across the way an’ sign up.
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George and Lennie’s friendship
is an unusual one. They travel everywhere together, and they look after each other. It’s probably not hard for you
to say why Lennie wants to be with George. Lennie is simple; he relies on George almost
like George is a father, and George makes his life feel great because he promises Lennie
that he’ll get to tend rabbits.
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In November 1785, the Scottish poet, Robert Burns, wrote a poem called ‘To A Mouse’. He was a farmer as well as a poet, and he was ploughing a field in late autumn when he accidentally ploughed over the nest of a field mouse. The mouse would have survived the winter in this nest, but now it was going to die from the cold because there was neither the time nor the materials to make a new nest. Burns wrote the poem afterwards to apologise to the mouse. One verse in Scots dialect goes: In proving foresight may be vain: The best laid schemes o’ mice and men Gang aft agley [often go wrong] And lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain For promis’d joy.’
Steinbeck deliberately wrote ‘Of Mice
and men’ so that it could easily be converted into a play. Each of the six chapters
is confined to one scene, and starts with a description of the scene. Characters come in,
speak, and then go off, as in a stage-play. Take one of the book’s chapters and
arrange it as a script for a play, adding more directions for the actors than Steinbeck
has written. (Chapter Three would be a good one to choose). Finally... Write a different ending to the story. Imagine that Curley arrives just as George is about to shoot Lennie, and stops him. The other men arrive… How could the story go on from there? Back to Year 10 | Back to English Homepage
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