Hopelessness and intellectual disabilities

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HOPELESSNESS AND INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES

Essay based on Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Book Club

Teacher: Rodrigo Arias Z.

Celin Sánchez Varas

September 2021

Hopelessness

“The feeling or state of being without hope.” (Cambridge Dictionary)

Intellectual Disability

“Disability characterized by significant limitations in both intellectual functioning and in adaptive behavior, which covers many everyday social and practical skills.” (American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities)

Hopelessness and intellectual disabilities often come together, not just for the person who suffers the disability but for their surroundings too. Through the novella we can perceive how the lack of treatment, knowledge and patience can link those two words and worlds, especially with George.

The most significant example of hopelessness about intellectual disability that the author shows us in the novella is in the first chapter:

““Well, we ain’t got any,” George exploded. “Whatever we ain’t got, that’s what you want. God a’mighty, if I was alone I could live so easy. I could go get a job an’ work, an’ no trouble. No mess at all, and when the end of the month come I could take my fifty bucks and go into town and get whatever I want. Why, I could stay in a cat house all night. I could eat any place I want, hotel or any place, and order any damn thing I could think of. An’ I could do all that every damn month. Get a gallon of whisky, or set in a pool room and play cards or shoot pool.” Lennie knelt and looked over the fire at the angry George. And Lennie’s face was drawn with terror. “An’ whatta I got,” George went on furiously. “I got you! You can’t keep a job and you lose me ever’ job I get. Jus’ keep me shovin’ all over the country all the time. An’ that ain’t the worst. You get in trouble. You do bad things and I got to get you out.” His voice rose nearly to a shout. “You crazy son-of-a-bitch. You keep me in hot water all the time.””

In this paragraph we star to understand that Lennie has trouble to keep a job, to “act normal”, it shows us that Lennie has limitations in both intellectual and in adaptive behaviour and George does not have the patience to control his frustration, which is not out of the ordinary because of the historical context of the novella, The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Those years were full of hopelessness and frustrations people lose everything they had and had to leave their families and friends for jobs, food, etcetera. We can recognize that the author took that emotion and amplified it adding a Intellectual disability.

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