The Other Animals On the Farm

Another Iphone barrels down the conveyor belt towards you, you reach out and place in your small part, does that make 300 times today? You can no longer remember, for your memory is void replaced only by the menial thought of that one repetitive motion. In the same way as the mundane factory work, George, Lennie and the other farmers are valued solely for their unquestioning labor, and left bunked up in a shed with their only time to truly use their brains, being to dream of a better future. As George and Lennie work on a farm trying to earn enough to pursue their dream they are faced with the challenges of the farm and the people working on it as they try to get by. In Steinbeck's novel, Lennie represents the workers in the wake of the dust bowl, and accentuates the way in which the working class is treated like animals with little regard to their human character.

Much like an authoritarian government where every action appears to be in the effort to prevent social unrest, much is same on the farm with the needs of the farm and its owners, becoming the sole concern for its workers. From the living quarters to the shoes of the bosses, they all strive to create an image putting each worker in their place of servitude. White washed walls of the bunkhouse, with each bunk lined against the wall creates the image of a clean concrete barn with animals in their pens lined against the wall. The bunkhouse conjures images of cows or horses, but the quarters of Crooks appears almost lower than that of the animals, a mere outcropping of the barn, and the inhabitant is entertainment for the drunken holidays. Those are the details, starting with the housing that create the invisible cast system of the farm. The owner is highest and the pyrami...

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...ment left only to work until they are seen as unfit to work, and then as an unproductive farm animal put out of their misery. As engines of productivity steinbeck highlights the mercy that the workers are at through Candie and his dog. Carlson tells Candie “If you want me to, I’ll put the old devil out of of his misery right now” (52: ch. 3). This moment showed Candie that he too was disposable once he lost use, in the same way that the dog is disposable.

By comparing the workers to animals Steinbeck characterizes the degrading conditions and treatment towards the workers and their expectations. When workers aren’t valued for their humanity, the result is workers who like Lennie, react as animals of instincts. This story is a mantra that still has its importance in the factories today, where workers are synonymous with robots, completing their one task over and over.