For which character do we most feel sorry for in the story of Mice and Men?

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For which character do we most feel sorry for in the story of Mice and Men?

        

Throughout the novel of Mice and Men, sympathy is engendered for the character in many ways and in many different situations. This feeling is created for the readers by outlining such issues that exist in the era that the book was written in, such as poverty and widespread loneliness. Although there are not actually that many characters within the novel I will be looking at how the writer creates the feeling of sorrow for most of them. The characters we feel sorrow for include:

        Itinerant workers         Curley

George                 Curley’s wife

Lennie                         Crooks

Candy                         

Itinerant workers

        

The first characters we come across in the novel are George and Lennie. The two quickly become the main characters, and they are what are known as itinerant workers, we later meet characters such as Whit, and Carlson. The word itinerant means travelling from place to place, so itinerant workers are a group who can not find or cannot hold on to a regular annual job. These were in a particularly large number in the late 1920’s and 1930’s and many did seasonal work on ranches. The book is set in 1930’s California which is just after the Wall Street crash of 1929. As a result of this, the period the book is set in is a time of extremely high unemployment rates and in the middle of a Great Depression. Often men would work for no more than fifty dollars a month and were soon out of work. The group would drift from one ranch to another, from one job to another and became known as itinerant workers. As the workers roamed around the country often it grew harder and harder to stay in contact with close family and friends, this is summed up when we first hear George and Lennie talk about their dream. The dream has arguably the most significance to the way the story unfolds, and it comes up many more times within the story. However, the very first few lines of the story mention the loneliness I referred to earlier. The quote is:

Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don’t belong no place”

This is self-explanatory and explains the loneliness the itinerant workers feel. It is almost as if the itinerant workers feel they are outcasts who belong nowhere and almost have to stick to their own ‘type’ as they have no one to turn to. This may, and probably does, explain the lack of excitement they face from day to day life. Again there are quotes within the novel that suggest this, including when Whit is talking about his fellow cultivator Bill Tanner who had since moved on likely to a different ranch. The scene is Whit showing Slim and George a magazine, in which was a letter from Bill Tanner. Whit shows his excitement by using short, snappy sentences like “Go on” “Read it aloud”. As slim reads further and further Whit’s excitement seems to grow, until he could hold it no more and the writer uses words to describe his mood such as cried out. This shows that within their life they experience such a lack of excitement that when one of their friend’s letter gets into a magazine they wish to show everyone. He also protects it, as if it was vitally important and when George wants to read the letter Whit will not let go “but he did not surrender his hold on it”. This whole paragraph basically shows the itinerant workers and George’s lack of excitement and what some people may see as unachievable dreams. However some people may also argue that the itinerant workers are the lucky ones. As I mentioned earlier the 1930’s are a time of great depression and unemployment, a lot of people may not be able to work or simply cannot find work and would still have to support a family, which in the time the novel was set, tended to be large. The itinerant workers on the other hand had a wage coming at the end of each month and only had to look after themselves. So although $50 a month may not sound like much, they still got all their food and shelter for free so effectively the wage they got was simply for whatever they felt like spending it on.

George 

George is the story's main protagonist, a small, quick man with well-defined features. A migrant ranch worker, George dreams of one day saving enough money to buy his own place and be his own boss, living off of the land. The hindrance to his objective is his mentally handicapped companion, Lennie, with whom he has travelled and worked since Lennie's Aunt Clara, whom George knew, died. The majority of George's energy is devoted to looking after Lennie, whose blunders prevent George from working toward his dream, or even living the life of a normal rancher. Thus, George's conflict arises in Lennie, to whom he has the ties of long-time companionship that he so often yearns to break in order to live the life of which he dreams. This tension strains George into demonstrating various emotions, ranging from anger to patience to sadness to pride and to hope. The writer (John Steinbeck) uses the itinerant workers and George’s dreams to use the stories first metaphor. Throughout the story we hear George and Lennie talk about their dream of buying “a little house” and living their own life, without the pressures of having to work for anyone else but themselves. This is almost another dream within a much wider dream for George and I feel for many other workers, job security “an’ nobody could can us”. Fundamentally, all George and quite possibly the rest of the itinerant workers want is a life for himself and not to have to work for anyone. Although there are many metaphors within the novel, I personally feel this is where Steinbeck uses his first metaphor. George and many other of the men are often in the habit of playing solitaire, a card game that requires only one person, while they are in the bunkhouse. George never asks Lennie to play cards with him because he knows that Lennie would be incapable of such a mental task. Solitaire, which means alone, is a metaphor for the loneliness of the characters and in the novel, who have no one but themselves. It is also a metaphor for George's desire to be "solitaire," to be no longer burdened with Lennie's company, and his constant playing of the game foreshadows his eventual decision to become a solitary man. George often feels he has no chance of ever fulfilling any of his dreams for his loyalty to Lennie. For instance George is unable to build a financial stake because Lennie loses them so many jobs. We know this as around half way through the novel George is talking to Slim and mentions Weed which was the last place of work for George and Lennie, but Lennie lost them both the men the job because a woman claimed she was raped. George and Lennie were chased out of the town “An’ that night we scrammed outa there”. George is forced, through loyalty to Lennie to leave another job and nearly loses his life in weed. All this means he has to flee town and his job with “less than ten bucks” to pursue his dream. However yet again as in the itinerant workers and probably every other argument I will make people would argue that George is fortuitous compared to others. Although throughout the story he complains about having Lennie constantly with him and following him,

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“And when the end of the month come I could take my fifty bucks and go into town and get whatever I want. Why, I could stay in a cathouse all night. I could eat any place I want, hotel or any place, and order any damn thing could think of. An’ I could do all that every damn month. Get a gallon of whisky, or set in a pool room and play cards or shoot pool.”

“When I think of the swell time I could have without you. I go nuts. I never get no peace”

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