Don’t rely on outward appearances when making judgments.
AGREE: This statement is very similar to concept of not judging on the outside and instead on the inside. Personally, I have met various people in my life that, upon first visual glance, one can easily make certain negative assumptions. However, those various people of course don’t reflect those negative assumptions once I learned about who they are, their morals, etc.

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Justice is always blind.
DISAGREE: It’s difficult to find total justice in everything that there is. But I don’t believe it is blind; the true form of justice is to satisfy all parties involved in a fair way. Personally, I’ve had many arguments with my brother, though my parents understand that justice is not to side with me every time, but rather to find a solution that will equally satisfy all parties. It isn’t justice that can sometimes be blind; it is the skewed image that an individual may have of what justice is.

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A brotherly love between two friends can be just as strong as an intimate love between a man and a woman.
AGREE: Brotherly love and love between a man and a woman are two different things, but it is love nonetheless. I like to think of this as a comparison/metaphor to how someone makes a movie. Actors play their roles, cinematographers make sure the picture is of quality, and directors direct. They all serve different purposes but are working towards making a movie. See; love between a man and a woman and love between brothers can be same in terms of strength; it is just that they take different forms. Personally, I have a step-brother who I love very much and am happy to be an older sibling of. However, love for a woman is still the same level as what I’d have for the various individuals in my family.

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You can break a promise as long as you have a good excuse
AGREE: I prefer to live on reason. Any promise can be broken with a good excuse, but it is supposed to be a very good excuse that is proportionate to the promise broken. I wouldn’t claim that I was unable to come to dinner by using an excuse like “I feel tired, sorry”. A legitimate excuse would be something such as “A family member is in the hospital” or “I’ve suffered an injury”. I’m not saying that promises should always be broken, but should they need to, they can be if a legitimate excuse is given. Personally, I make very few promises, but I have seen certain family members break a few. For example, my grandmother has a lot of sisters and brothers. When one of her sisters (name is Patti) passed, they would of course leave money for their children to inherit. It was divided quite equally, though, greed had sometimes overcome that. At least, that’s what I thought at first. My grandmother was the only person to take care of the costs of the entire funeral, so her excuse to take extra in order to cover those charges is justified; it is a good excuse.

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Love is blind.
AGREE: Some of the things that people do out of love for another individual can often be extravagant in most cases. People would spend thousands upon thousands of dollars for weddings or diamond rings. In other cases it could be violent. People would sometimes kill in the name of their significant other. Love is a powerful thing, as it blurs everything that happens in the background and puts a single individual in focus. Personally, I have blindly followed love in the slightest sense; buying certain things for the other individual for their birthday, spending time to write a card on Valentine’s day; very small things, yet it is still money and time spent just because of love.

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Stereotypes are often right.
AGREE: The reason why stereotypes put in place and adapted by so many in the first place is because that is the image that a group of people or individual shows. Again, they are often right; which means that there can be times wherein the stereotype is not inherent of a group. To say that white people can’t dance, or asians are good at math, or only blacks can dance is stereotyping, yes, but is it incorrect? In some cases, yes. Some stereotypes are exhausted. Outdated. Yet when they aren’t exhausted and aren’t outdated, they are temporarily true; that’s why stereotypes are born in the first place. A predictive factor. A widely generalized image of a certain group. So I do agree that they are often right, though I don’t believe for a large majority of them to be right forever. As a personal experience, throughout life I generalized that Asians always have strict parents. A lot of the time with every Asian-American family I’ve met, the parents are strict on things ranging from minimum grade in school to the expectations they have for their future child’s future careers. See; people stereotype groups of people to be a certain thing or have a certain attribute based on groups similar to them. It’s certainly not a good thing to do, but a lot of the time they are right. Stereotypes are “empirical generalizations”.

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An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is a good motto to live by.
DISAGREE: An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is an extremely barbaric and skewed vision of justice. It is not an appropriate motto to live by because it is also dangerous. It can cause people to spiral down an endless path, if both parties keep exchanging an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. This motto knows no concept of forgiveness. During my elementary school days, grudges are what I feel was a constraint to certain friendships, if my friends were to do something to me in which I did not like. It would just be a constant build up of “well you took this so I get to take that” exchanges.

    Slim as a character in John Steinbeck's’ “Of Mice and Men” is one whose words are the law, for he is a man of assertiveness in the story, yet still retaining a collective and rational mentality with the individuals he works with. His rationalism is shown upon the introduction of him to the readers, as Steinbeck writes; “His ear heard more than was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.” He is open to George and Lennie’s story about traveling and how George confessed to having messed around with Lennie’s mental retardation, but also “real”; he speaks his thoughts in respectful manner. Yet, he still retains assertiveness through characters like the aggressive Curley; ensuring that readers know he seems to base his interactions with others off of “treat unto others the way one seeks to be treated”. This is very much exemplified when Slim tells Curley “I’m gettin’ God damn sick of it. If you can’t look after your own God damn wife, what you expect me to do about it? You lay offa me.” (note that this is when Curley confronts Slim regarding the whereabouts of his wife and prior to when Curley starts attacking Lennie). Though he maintains a calm demeanor in his regular state, he is more than willing to make sure that one should not be “fooled” by it; certainly something he made clear in that near-hostile interaction. He is consistent in being a reasonable individual in the book.
    Such reasonability is further shown during Slim’s interaction with Lennie and George’s story prior to them coming to the ranch. Proceeding George’s explanation as to why they left Weed and arrived near the Soledad River, Slim says “He ain't mean, I can tell a mean guy a mile off.” He understands that Lennie’s mental state has somewhat affected him. Paired with his strength, he can see how Lennie is not the kind of individual that would deliberately do such actions. Slim also states “He’s a nice fella, guy don’t need no sense to be a nice fella.” His sincerity is clear and genuine towards George as they discussed Lennie. Slim’s character; it’s a type that many people in the ranch admire, and, in Curley’s case, may become jealous of.

    In “Of Mice & Men” by John Steinbeck, the time in which the story takes place and various other things affect a lot of the way how the characters in the story think and act. For example, the price of purchasing a ranch. In the story, for characters George and Lennie, they need just around $600 in order to purchase the ranch of their dreams. Such a ranch they dream on purchasing would likely cost so much more than what is stated in the book. It just goes to show how cheap everything became during the Great Depression. It also relates to the characters themselves. George and Lennie are constantly working from job to job, being, in a way, homeless; similar to the people that they’ve met on the ranch that they work at in the middle of the story. The depression is a wall that all characters are experiencing and are attempting to climb.

The Great Depression

  The amount of resources needed for the U.S. in World War I contributed to being the first domino  of the U.S. economy's depletion in the 1920s. According to HyperHistory which provides a timeline of the Great Depression, the U.S. federal government had to "...spend three times larger than tax collections." during the war. Following it's end, the U.S. had to deal with the cutting back of their budget in order to compensate for what they spent during the war. This attempt, though, was unsuccessful in saving the economy. In addition to this, the amount of labor that was available are as follows: "The United Mine Workers Union will see its membership fall from 500,000 in 1920 to 75,000 in 1928. The American Federation of Labor would fall from 5.1 million in 1920 to 3.4 million in 1929." This decimated the various companies that needed those workers. Thus, causing millions of workers to go jobless; resulting to the inability of purchase from the middle-classes.