John Steinbeck composed his novella Of Mice and Men--as well as in his seminal novel, The Grapes of Wrath- at a time when he was involved in California's social and economic problems. In Of Mice and Men, he writes about a group of people, the white migrant workers, who were to shortly disappear from American culture as farm owners began increasinly to employ low-wage foreign workers. During the 1930s there were thousands of these Americans who followed the harvestings in search of work; these "bundle-stiffs" are whom Steinbeck concerns his themes and characterization in Of Mice and Men.
Another threat to the American migrant workers--200,00 to 350,000 --was the employment of farm machinery, such as the combine used to harvest grain, which reduced the needed number of hands. In California, these "farms" were more like the timber industry or mining or oil industries. The owners were distant and rarely visited their land, hiring managers to oversee the farming, so there was a depersonalization that existed. Profit was the only concern of these owners.
It is this alienation of the "bundle-stiffs" about which Steinbeck, who was a Socialist, concerns his narrative; these displaced men have no friends, no home as there are forced to leave family and friends in search of work during the Great Depression. In this theme of alienation, Steinbeck includes no women other than the temptress Curley's wife, who acts as another of the forces which spoil to the fraternity of the men.
As a novella, Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men permits only room for his main theme which concerns the American migrant worker. Although he is concerned about him, Steinbeck later became involved with the plight of Mexicans after the "Zoot-Suit Affair." His treatment of Crooks in the novella is realistic, and he uses this character to underscore the terrible aloneness of all men during the time of the setting. Since women were not a real part of the itinerant work force they simply do not figure into Steinbeck's theme.
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