In six pages the 'survival of the fittest' premise of social Darwinism is examined in terms of how it is reflected in Steinbeck's novel. Five sources are cited in the bibliography.
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life and times were hard at the time that Steinbecks Of Mice and Men was published in 1937. The country already had suffered eight years of the decade of
the Great Depression, and the federal government already had done all it could devise to spur economic growth. Dreams were scarce; survival ranked higher with most adults of the
era. It was a time that social Darwinism repeatedly surfaced. Only those who could meet the challenges of the day would survive
them. Others would not necessarily lose their lives; they would lose far more than that. Those who had been removed from the circles of the wealthy and powerful
were far more vulnerable than were the classes that had occupied middle and lower levels before the onset of the depression in 1929. Those people were well acquainted with
hard work before the crash, and they continued that relationship after it happened. Though their dreams were pushed further away with economic reality, their dreams still existed. "Survival
of the fittest" became a phrase that individuals used to spur themselves onward, and it is a concept that can be found in Steinbecks work. George and Lennie
As Lennies self-appointed protector, George emerges as the stronger of the two men. Both uneducated and largely unskilled, neither man was afraid of hard
work. It was the only kind of work that either knew, and likely neither would have been comfortable with any other type of arrangement. The dream that they
had of buying their own farm likely originated with George. We are not told of the nature or origin of Lennies mental incapacity, but it seems likely that he