Of Mice And Men

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Of Mice And Men Essay

Throughout “Of Mice And Men” we see numerous examples of loneliness and dreams, portrayed differently in each character.  The two themes are often thought to contrast one another, although I believe there is symmetry between the two during this novel.  Steinbeck uses the characters of George and Lennie to demonstrate how dreams can often lead to loneliness, and he uses the character of Crooks to show how loneliness can fabricate dreams.    

     I believe loneliness is mans lack of friends and ability to socialize. But in the novel it is not portrayed like this. The men on the ranch are lonely because they have no solidity within their job and there life. A clear example of this is when George explains to Lennie how people on ranches are the loneliest people; he says “ 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 sums up the lives on the people of the ranch.  Such people like to think about their dreams when they get lonely.  George and Lennie’s fantasy is to own their own ranch, although we find that Lennie only really cares about tending the rabbits. Many characters have dreams in the book and all of the characters are lonely. This shows how loneliness and dreams can complement each other.

I think it is important to read a novel from a different culture, as it allows us to learn of the lives of other human beings, and gives us an insight into what it was like to live in their environment.  The novel is set at the time of the “Wall Street Crash.”  This is significant, as it affected the lives of a huge number of people alive at the time, and this is shown in the lives of the characters Steinbeck writes of.  On the ranch the men are made to work very hard, and they receive little money for their efforts.  The men know times are hard, and they seem to have accepted that there is no alternative way of life for them.  As a result, all of the characters dream of better times ahead, and Steinbeck keeps this theme apparent throughout the novel.  This fits in extremely well with the context of the novel because of the depression in the 1930’s. The life they live is an ideal way of showing how hard life was for people back then.

  We can tell the novel is set in a very different culture to ours, because of the continual references to nature.  The novel begins with the line “a few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green.  The water is warm too for it has slipped a twinkle over yellow sands in the sunlight.”  By beginning this way, Steinbeck sets the tone for the remainder of the novel, as it introduces us to the setting, and the environment in which he intends to set the novel.

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  The two main characters, George and Lennie are shown to be two very contrasting characters, despite both having solitary personalities.  Lennie is shown as very simple, whereas George is shown as the brains of the pair. We are given numerous examples of Lennie being simple, for example, when they arrive at the ranch and George says to Curley, “He ain’t no cuckoo, he’s dumb as hell.”  This instantly shows us George’s opinion of Lennie. The descriptions of Lennie are mostly negative ones. George speaks to him as though he is a child. He has to repeat things such as ...

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