How does the use of physical and mental impairments help to characterize the personages of Of Mice and Men?in particular, Lennie, Crooks, Candy and...

Physical and mental impairments in Of Mice and
Men serve to symbolize both the disfranchisement of the "bindle stiffs" and
their tragic yearnings during the Great Depression, the setting of the novel.  In
Steinbeck's work of Social Realism, the dispossessed men of the narrative have little or
no recourse against the fatalistic forces that work against them.  For, Steinbeck
perceives a tragic and problematic relationship between the itinerant workers and the
land that they work, a relationship that he symbolizes with the physical and
psychological impairments of the characters who live as solitary men outside Soledad and
exist outside the real workings of agriculture.

While the
characters George, Lennie, Candy, and Crooks are employed at the ranch, they are
completely outside any of the real workings of the place and can easily be deposed from
this ranch.  Candy, for instance, worries constantly that he will be disposed of just
like his old dog because he can no longer be useful in the fields after having lost his
hand. Equally insecure is Crooks, whose back is broken; he inability to
stand erect symbolizes his inability to be perceived and treated as a man because he is
black. Lennie, as Steinbeck himself once wrote, "...was not to represent insanity at all
but the inarticulate and powerful yearning of all men" as he repeatedly asks George to
recite their dream of owning a farm themselves on which they can be independent. And,
although Curley is the son of the boss, he, too, is impaired; his crushed hand
symbolizes the absolute detachment of the large agricultural businesses from those who
work on the land, another impairment to what Steinbeck held as the fraternity of men
necessary for a successful society.

Indeed, the lives of
the bindle stiffs of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men lead lives of what
Thoreau called "tragic desperation" as they are handicapped by the social realities of
the Depression that have left them dispossessed and alone in an uncaring world of
large business-like farms.