In John Steinbeck's novella, Of Mice and Men, why are most characters known by single names?

In Of Mice and Men, by John
Steinbeck, with the story's overall message in mind about the disenfranchisement of so
many during the Great Depression, I would assume that using surnames only compounds the
sense of loss for those living in that era.

With the Great
Crash of 1929, the economy literally fell apart while society and the government
watched. Jobs were lost; entire fortunes disappeared when the banks failed; and, vast
numbers of people lost their homes. Steinbeck writes about the travails of a family
looking to find a new life in his novel The Grapes of Wrath. The
experiences are much the same in terms of people moving across the country looking for a
means to survive. The dream that George and Lennie share is to work hard enough to buy
their own place and settle down, no longer needing to be forever on the move and working
for someone else.

The use of surnames in this novel is just
one more way that shows the demoralization of individuals. In this particular case,
Crooks probably puts it most clearly. It has become the "American Dream," to stop moving
and find a piece of land and settle down, with no need to travel anymore. Yet Crooks
watches so many that come and so many that go, all harboring the same dream—but never
realizing it.

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I seen hundreds of men come by on the road an' on
the ranches with their bindles on their back an' that same damn thing in heir heads.
Hundreds of them. They come, an' they quit an' go on; an' every damn one of 'em's got a
little piece of land in is head. An' never a God damn one of 'em ever gets it. Just like
heaven. Ever'body wants a little piece of
land...

To my way of
thinking, people then weren't numbers as so often they are today: within society, we
often lose our identity and become an identification number of some kind. However,
during the Depression, people came and moved on so quickly, that people rarely
identified with others as individuals, but saw only a blur of faces passing through.
This loss of identity plagued individuals who had lost everything. Eleanor Roosevelt,
wife to President F. D. Roosevelt, saw the need to establish a new sense of identity,
which was lost during the Depression. The use of surnames only supports the theme of
lost individuality.

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[During the Great Depression], it was as
important to the government to cultivate a unified American society as it was to return
the country to economic stability.  Eleanor Roosevelt brilliantly understood the need to
develop a national sense of esteem and identity, and pressured her husband to take
action.

Learning a last name
supports the feeling of the loss of self as people never stayed long enough for workers
to get to truly know one another. Based on Crook's observations, there was no point to
trying to build a relationship with someone because there was no sense of community:
just the constant change of faces.