FDR and Of Mice and Men
Although there are many who dismiss FDR's New Deal as socialist garbage, with no more effect on the poor than LBJ's "Great Society" (indeed many believe that these types of socialist solutions actually prolonged our nation's ills), we instead will approach Of Mice and Men with the understanding that FDR was the people's president, loved by most, respected by all, tough, fatherlike, what we expect from a leader (no Clinton shame, no Bush disdain). When he died in 1945, the nation wept. My mother (b. 1929) had never known another president. She was 16. FDR was supposed to be in the White House. It was a day like 9/11, or when Kennedy was assassinated, or, for me, when John Lennon was killed in 1980. Shows on Broadway were cancelled. Businessmen were sent home. America was now not only at war, it was in mourning.

But that is all still to come. In the era of OM&M, the New Deal had only just begun. The process was slow, the effect hardly felt, but people began to work again, to heal, to find the way to feed their families. When it was published in 1937, there was a reluctant optimism that no one would talk about. Roosevelt had just won his second term in office, production of goods was up and there was slight boom in construction. The WPA and the Federal Writers Project employed nearly 10,000 artists and writers (who probably wouldn't have had work even if there hadn't been a depression), and there were no clear signs yet to the American people that war was inevitable.


Nonetheless, what work there was was temporary or seasonal and Americans found themselves moving from job to job and town to town. Enter George and Lenny, two boxcar bindle stiffs (you'll find out) who've found work again, and never give up on the elusive American Dream.