American Injustice: Can Our Voices Effect Change?

Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck (1902-1968)

“(A writer) is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.”

                                   —John Steinbeck, Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech 1962

Essay Question: How does Steinbeck use characters in this novel to present his view of prejudice and bias?  Considering the bleak way the novel ends, what do you think Steinbeck is saying about a society that allows injustice, hatred and oppression? Explain how the novel reflects Steinbeck’s quote, above.

This small classic novel of the struggles of the common man is a plea for justice. Published in 1937, it perfectly illustrates Steinbeck's own calling to "expose our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement." The novel's simple characters vividly express the suffering of isolation, fear, desperation and hopelessness of common folks crushed by issues of poverty, racism and lack of social support for the elderly and disabled. While the novel reveals the power of dreams to provide comfort and strength, it also shows the cruelty that happens when we have a society that allows civil injustice and oppression. The humble dream of  a farm where labor could end after eight hours, where one's harvest was the fruits of that labor, where the elderly and disabled and discarded members of society were given dignity and purpose, a place of safety and shelter, where the innocent are not harmed and a place where they could enjoy the presence of family is a dream of salvation for the people and for the nation. 

Of the many biblical allusions Steinbeck's uses, none rings so poignantly as the passage that would have been familiar to his mostly-Christian audience, the passage from the Book of Matthew known as The Judgment of the Nations. When asked who will go to heaven, Jesus responds that they who care for the sick, the poor, the hungry, strangers and those in prison -- the lowliest members of society -- are the ones who will be blessed. In 1939, our nation had far to go to achieve salvation.  Perhaps these qualification of what makes a society noble should be held as a goal for all leaders, or who aspire to be leaders of our nation in the coming election year. In the end, this small novel, Of Mice and Men reveals that when a nation discriminates against the least of its members, it destroys us all. The murders of three civil rights "Freedom Riders" in 1964 is just one small example of how unfettered hatred has no boundaries. 

John Steinbeck wrote about poor, oppressed people and their noble plight and struggles against impossible odds.  The setting for many of his works was the Great Depression in the United States (1929-1939) which caused many already poor people to become destitute. During this time a natural disaster called the Dust Bowl also occurred. This was a great drought exacerbated by bad farming practices that affected the Midwest, where much of the food is grown in this country.  Many farmers lost the land that was in their families for generations and migrated to California.  Steinbeck’s greatest work, The Grapes of Wrath, is a novel about such a family that migrates in search of hope and a future.  They find only more oppression as migrant workers. 

During the time Of Mice and Men was written, our country had no social support systems for the poor and destitute.  There was no Social Security to help older people. There was no Welfare, Medicare or Medicaid.  There were no laws to prevent discrimination and racism, and there were few humane mental institutions for people with mental disabilities. Labor unions were struggling to gain rights for workers, and in Europe, the threat of war was on the horizon.  Steinbeck also wrote: East of Eden, Winter of Our Discontent, Cannery Row, and The Pearl.   He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962. 

Shakespeare's Universal Appeal

Shakespeare was born in April 1564, and likely died on his 52nd birthday -- on April 23. While there is some uncertainty about his real birth date, the day of his death is undisputed. Seventeenth century Europe is often referenced by historians as the Early Modern Era. Church records, legal records, published broadsheets, letters, printed books, pamphlets, poems, plays and personal diaries from this time are mined by historians today in famous libraries all over the world. Yet, very little has turned up to shape the life of most famous writer of all time.

William Shakespeare is with little doubt the most brilliant author in the English language. It is hardly hyperbole to declare this. His characters are amazingly real. He was astoundingly perceptive in his observation of humans. He recreated them on the page -- complex characters with a full range of emotions, and profound internal conflicts. They are intensely, deeply rich in psychological reality. And he did this within the limits of a play, in “two hours traffic” upon the stages of his time, not in a long novel.

His plays are in verse and no one can compare with the stunning shock of the beauty of his poetry. His plays are phenomenally well-crafted, and structurally, nearly flawless. Thematically, Shakespeare is unmatched in his ability to touch the human soul, and to speak lucidly and profoundly to human lives. Perhaps the most convincing argument for his genius is that he is the most quoted, most translated of any author on earth. And while we who love his plays get to know his characters very well, not very much is known of the man who created them.

Orson Welles as Macbeth

Shakespeare's Macbeth is one of his best-known and best-loved works. In the past ten years alone there have been six film versions of this play, one set in a hospital ward during a war, one involving drug lords in Australia, one adaptation from Mumbai, India, and two set in fast food restaurants. (Fast food restaurants? Well, there is considerable blood in this play.) 

In 1948, Orson Welles (see left) filmed an extraordinarily haunting version of Macbeth that visually is breathtaking, and considered a classic take on this play today. What many don't realize though, is that in 1936, Welles, just two years shy of his infamy in broadcasting The War of the Worlds, staged an all-African American version of Macbeth set in Haiti. The play was staged in Harlem, and funded by the Works Project Administration. It received excellent reviews, although including black actors in Shakespeare at the time was radical, and it pejoratively became known as the "Voodoo" Macbeth, Welles would later prove his genius, far ahead of his time, in understanding the universal appeal of Shakespeare.  Check out as the rap artist Akala, explains the hip-hop in Shakespeare and conducts a workshop to rap to the bard. In 1957, Akira Kurosawa, famed Japanese director, did a spectacular adaptation called Throne of Blood, set among Samurai warriors. 

This theater company in Washington, DC, seeks to
preserve classic plays with universal themes for all ages

Shakespeare's timelessness is at work here: Macbeth asks dark questions of the nature of the human soul and redemption that will always resonate:  What happens when a person is expected to be violent, in a violent world? What happens if the most important person in your life rails at you to commit murder to gain power and her respect? Does violence yield real power, or does it breed fear and paranoia? Can you find redemption for your most horrid sins, or will their memories haunt your days and shatter your nights? When you commit evil, is Hell in the afterlife, or in this one? 

Shakespeare’s characters shape his spirit for us, if not his life. Borrowing here from Macbeth, they strut and fret their hours upon the stage of our lives, to the last syllable of recorded time, for all our tomorrows. And what a haunting and engaging set of spirits they are as their pageants recreate the fabric of our lives and remind us that “we are such stuff / As dreams are made on. And our little life / Is rounded with a sleep” (Tempest 4.1). 

Fussli, Johann Heinrich

Lady Macbeth Walking in Her Sleep, 1741-1825

Louvres, Paris.

Macbeth Thematic Questions 

• What happens when a person is expected to be violent, in a violent world? 
• What do you do if the most important person in your life rails at you to murder a family member to gain power and respect? 
• Does violence yield real power, or does it breed fear and paranoia? 
• Can you find redemption for your most horrid sins, or will their memories haunt your days and shatter your nights? 
• When you commit evil, is Hell in the afterlife, or in this one?
• How does Shakespeare use supernatural elements to express psychological reality for Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in this play?

Francesco Zuccarelli
Macbeth Meeting the Witches, 1760
Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.

A Question of Righteousness

WATCH: I Am Not Your Negro: documentary of James Baldwin
Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart: documentary of Lorraine Hansberry

In life, our struggle for justice can be clouded by our own ambitions. In literature, the classic figure of a tragic hero embodies this struggle between what one perceives is righteousness, but what others might perceive as self-serving, pride or arrogance.

Sidney Poitier as Walter Younger

Consider Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet. He agrees to marry the lovers so that the “rancor” between these warring Mafioso families will be turned “to pure love” (2.3.99). And as an intelligent priest, he believes that the power of God’s love will certainly overcome hatred. But if his beliefs are not misguided, his actions certainly are, as he gives Juliet a potion to make her seem dead to her parents and Paris. His act of secretly marrying Romeo and Juliet results in five deaths by the end of the play.

Can we ever be certain that our best-intended actions will effect the results that we believe are noble? Will our judgement be clouded by our own desires, or as the Greeks called it, our hamartia: the “fatal flaw” in our human character that causes us not to see the damage we do?

The core human issues expressed in tragedy often can give us means and courage to survive the misery that we ourselves inevitably cause in our lives. We learn to understand and forgive the human flaws that cause us to err in judgment, sometimes catastrophically.  

Classical tragedy is often a great source of comfort for prisoners, politicians, moral leaders and soldiers – as well as for the rest of us. It is important to remember that tragedy reveals that there is no easy answer to life’s hardest questions and finding moral ground is often not simple. Tragic heroes make choices that seem logical at the time, though through weakness and lack of foresight these choices often backfire.

The paradox is that even in failure there is nobility in the human struggle to live honorably within our clouded perception, and that of this struggle, wisdom comes, always painfully, in the acceptance and understanding of our humanity, and of our place in the world: imperfect, flawed, mortal, yet blessed with joy, love, hope—and endurance.

Antigone, by Sophocles

Is it noble to go against your religion and family if it will save many people from death and war? Or do you honor your religion and favor your family members, even if it will cause destruction?  Should you commit a sin to save your own life, or do you follow your religion if it means not only your death, but the deaths of family members as well?

These are the unanswerable questions at the heart of the ancient Greek play, Antigone. While it might be easy to understand the position Antigone holds to bury her traitorous brother and honor her religion when the play begins, as the danger of her actions cascade onto her sister and her fiancé, Haemon – and indeed spread to her homeland, she herself questions if she may have been wrong. Is she more interested in self-glory than honor? Would not the gods, as her sister Ismene says, forgive her? Would not the gods, as Creon claims, condemn her brother Polyneices for attacking his own city with a foreign army?

Are Creon’s insecurities and fears of anarchy unfounded as he insists on proving his power by refusing to free Antigone, his own niece, and condemns her to death? Fear is a powerfully blinding force, especially in politics. As he attempts to secure peace, is Creon falling victim to his own hamartia?

A famous film version of Antigone, starring Irene Papas, was released in 1961, the same year a famous film version of A Raisin in the Sun was released. This decade of course, is noted for social justice movements.

A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry

This timeless American classic by Lorraine Hansberry is not a classical tragedy in that Walter and the Younger family are not brought down by Walter’s error in judgment. Rather, he learns that honor is not something that can be purchased, and in fact, true honor comes with acknowledging your own errors and being able to rise above them.

But the play is more than a simple family drama of what to do with the life insurance money Walter’s father bled and suffered for. He and Mama came North in the Great Migration, hoping for simple freedom. But in the North, the Youngers are bound in their poverty by quiet racial injustice that prohibits Walter, Ruth and Mama from rising above their jobs as servants to wealthy white people. Beneatha’s dream of becoming a doctor is thought of as unrealistic, idealistic, and a waste of precious resources. The white neighborhood where they purchase a home is so unwelcoming that the people there form a committee to pay them not to move in. Despair drives Ruth to seek an abortion rather than have hope that they will find a way to support another child. Walter, desperate to break free of poverty and racial disparagement, believes that the only way he can get a license to open his own liquor store and become his own boss, is by graft.  

New Neighbors, by Norman Rockwell

Hansberry’s own father fought the very same kind of housing discrimination in Chicago when the family was refused occupancy in an all-white neighborhood. His lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court, and the case, Hansberry v. Lee was ruled in his favor. Although Lorraine Hansberry’s life was cut short by cancer, she lived to win accolades and awards for A Raisin in the Sun, which since her death, has seen many revivals on Broadway – and three film versions. The first, with Sidney Poitier, won first prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1961. Another version stars Danny Glover and the third, has Sean “Puffy” Combs as Walter. Today the play is being staged in Stockholm, Sweden the cast consisting of Afro-Swedes.  

Hansberry herself faced discrimination not only as an African American woman. During the time she was writing, she needed to hide her homosexuality in order to work and live without threat to her life. In the 1950’s in the United States, the fight for gender equality and gay rights was in its infancy. The stories of the heroes struggling against this injustice have only begun to be told.