Disability, Racism, and Sexism in Steinbeck’s <i>Of Mice and Men</i>

Abstract Representation of disabled characters in Of Mice and Men has significantly influenced how Americans view mental impairment and how it is portrayed in the media. Nonetheless, the novella has been largely ignored in the emerging field of disability studies because of its supposedly simple moral lesson that leaves little space for complex analysis. This article demonstrates this novella’s depiction of themes of marginalization, injustice, and exploitation that characterize the sociocultural construct of disability. It further shows its connection with the eugenic beliefs diffused in Europe and America in the 1930s and analyzes representations of racism and misogyny. The disabled, Blacks, and women come to be represented as corporeally deficient anomalies leading to social anxieties about vulnerability, control, and identity. The stares, actions, and words of the white male characters who want to build and defend their supposedly superior normative identity manifest such discrimination. There is no space for otherness in Steinbeck’s realistic world. At the same time, however, those characters discriminated against are the ones who seem most truly human in their aspirations.