Both hero's & villains are all common victims of the harshness of the times". Choose two characters you consider to be victims in the novel. Examining the characters in detail, explain why you consider them victims.

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“Both hero’s & villains are all common victims of the harshness of the times”

Choose two characters you consider to be victims in the novel. Examining the characters in detail, explain why you consider them victims.

‘Of Mice and Men’ is written by John Steinbeck, published in 1937.  The novel is set in the 1930s during the great depression in California.  The two central characters are George and Lennie. George Milton is a traveling farm worker, friend and, protector of Lennie. He is small, but intelligent and quick-witted. Lennie Small is a huge child-like man who travels with George. He is incapable of looking after himself.  He is extremely strong, and is fascinated by soft things.  They have what many Americans had at the time, the American dream, a dream of one-day owning their own ranch.  They manage to find work in a ranch near to Soledad after having to escape from Weed.  The characters met at the ranch all suffer from some kind of loneliness.  The two characters I consider to be the main victims in the novel are Cook’s the negro, stable buck and Curly’s wife, who was never given a name. She’s the only female mentioned in the story apart from dead Ant Clara, and the prostitutes in town. Both of theses characters I consider to be, not the only victims, but the foremost victims in the novel.

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 Steinbeck generally represents women in the novel as troublemakers who bring ruin on men and drive them mad. Curley’s wife, who walks round the ranch like a temptress, seems to be a prime example of this destructive tendency. She’s a pretty, lonely girl who dreams of becoming a movie star. In the beginning of the story when Curley’s wife enters the bunkhouse looking for her husband, she is described as being dressed like a prostitute, and using body language that is persuasive in front of the men page no.:32 'She had full, rouged lips and wide spaced eyes, heavily made ...

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