Answer:
I think one thing Steinbeck is trying to get his readers to understand is that people need each other, even if the relationships may not fit the conventional paradigm that society might expect.
Explanation:
George and Lennie are the obvious example here. One man is short and "street-wise", while the other man is huge and simple-minded. All the same, the two men need each other, compliment one another (one provides "the brains", the other provides "the brawn"), and share a common dream.
"the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex."
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, gaining note for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. In his time, he was described by abolitionists as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens.
Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave.In his time, he was described by abolitionists as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Douglass was a firm believer in the equality of all peoples, whether black, female, Native American, or recent immigrant. He was also a believer in dialogue and in making alliances across racial and ideological divides, and in the liberal values of the U.S. Constitution.