During the Great Depression, American people suffered from unemployment, crashing stock markets, and unaffordable daily products. In addition to these problems, people were taken advantage of by corrupt police and unfair business owners. People living through these times learned to judge what is right and what is wrong on their own, rather than relying on others' judgments. Steinbeck expresses the idea that when justice fails people take matters into their own hands through the plot …showed first 75 words of 1273 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1273 total…Through the novels The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men and their plots, Steinbeck conveys the theme that when faced with an unfair situation, people take over the law as the law to decide for their own good. This reflects the time of Great Depression, where people rarely got proper, fair trial and the police were corrupt. People learned to live by their own rules, like the characters that appear in Steinbeck's books.