A Picture Is Worth 1000 Words

The time in which this book was set was the time of the Great Depression in America. When the Wall Street stock market crashed in 1929, many families had lost all their money and therefore also lost their homes. By the winter of 1932, America was in the depths of the greatest economic depression in history. The story of Lennie and George only highlights a few people affected by this economic crash, however, Of Mice and Men doesn't tell the tale of everyone who was affected. Obviously it couldn't, as over 1 million people were travelling around looking for work and desperate to round up some money. On top of that, America's depression seemed to spread to the rest of the world after the Americans called in their loans to other countries and put up customs to stop the import of foreign goods.

As well as the unfortunate depression, the Dust Bowl also hit America in the 1930s. Steinbeck wrote a number of novels based on the difficulties of living in 1930s America, using his own experiences for writing material. His novel 'The Grapes Of Wrath' talks about a family's struggle to escape the Dust Bowl of the West to reach California.

Here is a song that sums up the national mood of the people affected by the Depression: it's about an unemployed man asking for a dime from an old friend he fought with in WW1.

So if you hadn't already gathered, the depression was extremely serious and affected many people. Although George and Lennie are only characters in a book, they are perfect representations of real life people affected.

Below are some pictures taken by different photographers which were taken around the time of the Depression:

Protest outside the Bank Of The United States in 1931
after it went bankrupt.
-New York World Telegraph & Sun

'Migrant Mother' A mother with 3
children in California.
-Dorothea Lange

Evicted sharecroppers, Alabama, 1936
-John Vachon

'Cotton pickers wanted' sign in Southern California's San Joaquin
Valley, 1936
-Dorothea Lange

A mother and her children, California, 1936.
-Dorothea Lange

A homeless family walks from Phoenix to San Diego
looking for work, 1930.
-Dorothea Lange

"In other periods of depression, it has always been possible to see some things which were solid and upon which you could base hope, but as I look about, now I see nothing to give ground to hope - nothing of man"-Former President Calvin Coolidge, 1932