What are some challenges characters face in Of mice and men?

[Mark]

and how does it make the character stronger?

[Angela]

The characters in Of Mice and Men face challenges of social change, economic collapse, and environmental catastrophe. The effects of Black Tuesday, the stock market crash of 1929, spread quickly from Wall Street to middle America. Unemployment soared, and displaced workers moved from place to place, hunting for work. This nomadic living made it hard to start or maintain a family. It was a virtual impossibility for a migrant worker to earn enough to purchase land or a home, a reality Steinbeck reflects in George and Lennie’s shared—but seemingly impossible—dream of owning a farm.

George doesn't actually want to be staying in cathouses and pool rooms and hotels and the bottom of whisky bottles. Most ranch hands, George says, are lonely, bitter men—but not Lennie, and not him: "We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us. We don't have to sit in no bar room blowin' in our jack jus' because we got no place else to go. If them other guys gets in jail they can rot for all anybody gives a damn. But not us" (1.115).

Lennie may not be much company, but he's company. He gives George someone to care about and someone to think about. Even Lennie's dangerous water-drinking habits let George show that he cares, even when he's saying "The hell with the rabbits. That's all you can ever remember is them rabbits" (1.18-19). George may get tired of the rabbits, but he still tells Lennie's favorite bedtime story about their dream farm, and he still looks after Lennie as much as he can.
http://www.shmoop.com/of-mice-and-men/ge...ilton.html

AAA