Another theme that both of these novels explore is Friendship. Of Mice and Men the friendship is between George and Lennie. They are very good friend and rely on each other ‘because I got you to look after me and you got me to look after you’. Lennie needs George because he hasn’t got a mind of his own and he needs George to instruct him and guide him. However George needs Lennie because he needs company because he doesn’t want to be lonely. Also in the story Crooks, Curley’s wife and Candy are lonely as well. The friendship between George and Lennie doesn’t last. By killing Lennie, George shows his last act of Friendship. He knows that if he didn’t kill Lennie, Curley would have made him suffer in pain.
The friendship in The Withered Arm the friendship is between Rhoda and Gertrude first develops where Gertrude comes to her house to have a talk about her dream after the talk it gets stronger. But after that the friendship doesn’t develop much due to farmer Lodge’s experience in the past with Rhoda Brook. Also friendship is effected by external characteristics.
In Of Mice and Men John Stienbeck explores the theme of loneliness. Some characters are lonely, one way or another. The best examples are Crooks, Curley’s wife and Candy.
Crooks is lonely because he is black and all the other characters are prejudice against towards him ‘Negro stable buck’. He sleeps in his own room segregated from the other characters. Also they do not let him play cards with them. However they let him play horseshoe.
Another character who is lonely is Curley’s wife. As like Crooks he is the only black man on the ranch. Curley’s wife is the only woman on the ranch. Curley’s wife tries to avoid loneliness by reaching out to others and by flirting. She tries to seek Lennie’s attention and in the end that results in her death. The men in the ranch ignore Curley’s wife ‘I get lonely, you can talk to anybody but I can’t because Curley gets mad’. Due to the fact that most of the people are scared of Curley everyone ignores her.
Another character who is lonely is Candy. He is very old and he cannot do much and he is crippled. The only real friend he has is his dog and the dog gets shot by Carlson, which makes him even lonelier.
In The Withered Arm Rhoda Brook is very lonely. Rhoda Brook is stigmatised by the community because she broke the moral laws of society by having an affair with Farmer Lodge a person of different social group and she also has an illegitimate son due to the results of this affair. Also Thomas Hardy makes the reader feel that she is lonely by giving a description of when she is coming home ‘Their course lay apart from that of others, to a lonely spot high above the water mead and not far from the border of Egdon Heath, whose dark countenance was visible in the distance as they drew high to their home’.
Another theme which the authors explore is violence. In the Withered Arm the violence is in a vision that Rhoda has of Gertrude, which resolves in Rhoda grabbing Gertrude’s arm and throwing her on the floor, which leaves a handprint on Gertrude’s arm ‘Gasping for breath, Rhoda, in a last desperate effort, swung out her right hand, seized the confronting spectre by its obtrusive left arm, and whirled it backward to the floor, starting up herself as she did so with a low cry’.
In Of Mice and Men there is a lot of violence. The first example is when Lennie beats up Curley ‘But Lennie watched in terror the flopping little man whom he held. Blood ran down Lennie’s face, one of his eyes was cut and closed. George slapped him on the face again and again, and still Lennie held on to the closed fist. Curley was white and shrunken by now, and his struggling had become weak’. Another example is when George shoots Lennie as a last act of friendship ‘And George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it close to the back of Lennie’s head. The hand shook violently, but his face set and his hand steadied. He pulled the trigger. The crash of the shot rolled up the hills and rolled down again. Lennie jarred, and then settled slowly forward to the sand, and he lay without quivering’.
Dreams feature in both novels. In The Withered Arm Rhoda Brook has a dream in which she sees Gertrude Lodge ‘For the first time Gertrude Lodge visited the supplanted woman in her dreams’.
Where in Of Mice and Men George and Lennie have a dream of having their own ranch ‘We’ll have a big vegetable patch and a Rabbit Hutch and chickens. And when it rains in the winter, we’ll build up a fire in the stove and set around it an’ listen to the rain comin’ down on the roof’. However when you compare it to The Withered Arm it isn’t a nice dream or nightmare but it’s more of an ambition.
Also Curley’s wife has an ambition/dream of becoming an actress ‘Coulda been in the movies, an’ had nice clothes’.
The last but not least main theme is Tragedy. In The Withered Arm it is tragic when Rhoda’s son dies, as he had not done anything wrong ‘The mere sight of the twain had been long enough to suggest to her that the dead young man was Rhoda’s son’. Another tragic death was when Gertrude dies because it wasn’t her fault ‘Her delicate vitality, sapped perhaps by the paralysed arm, collapsed under the double shock that followed the severe strain…’. In different circumstances her friendship with Gertrude could have been different.
In Of Mice and Men tragedy is addressed when George shoots Lennie ‘And George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it close to the back of Lennie’s head. The hand shook violently, but his face set and his hand steadied. He pulled the trigger’. This is tragic because their friendship was very close.
