Of Mice And Men coursework (theme of loneliness and friendship)
English Coursework Consider the theme of loneliness in 'Of Mice and Men'. How does itaffect the friendships and relationships in the novel? This novel was written by John Steinbeck which was set in the1930s in Salinas Soledad which is in California.The novel consists of many historical factors which have affected thecharacters in this novel and one of them includes, "The greatdepression" Which leads the novels inspiration for the famous writerJohn Steinbeck which he mainly based on his own experience. In thosedays people travelled a lot differently to how we travel now.In those days migrant workers travelled extravagant distances lookingfor a job. There are many different themes in which are basedthroughout the whole book, such as loneliness, happiness, nature,dreams and reality: - Which even lead to catastrophe.Many of the people in this novel have very lonely lives mainly becausethey are migrant workers and as we know they don't have time to makeany friends or have any time to spend with their families. There aremany characters that are lonely due to age, sex, and race. Two goodexamples would be Candy because of his age and Crooks because of hisrace.This novel consists of two main characters George and Lennie, who arean anomalous pair of migrant workers that look after each other. Theyare completely the reverse of each other.George is the one who has the communicative face and thinks of all oftheir problems and ideas and tells the other one what to do. Beinglike this all of the time, in what ever the story it is, alwayspictures that you would be the
small quick one with sharp features.Lennie is the guy that is tall and always does what he is told and hasan ill-defined, solid, and powerful body and does not know his ownstrength. Steinbeck describes him as the one with no shape in his faceand his body. Lennie drags his feet when he walks and acts like ananimal. In the descriptions of these two men their appearance iscompletely different. George dresses neat and tidy, while Lenniedresses very scruffy.Just by the description of George and Lennie, you can clearly see thatLennie is the child out of the two men, as you can ...
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small quick one with sharp features.Lennie is the guy that is tall and always does what he is told and hasan ill-defined, solid, and powerful body and does not know his ownstrength. Steinbeck describes him as the one with no shape in his faceand his body. Lennie drags his feet when he walks and acts like ananimal. In the descriptions of these two men their appearance iscompletely different. George dresses neat and tidy, while Lenniedresses very scruffy.Just by the description of George and Lennie, you can clearly see thatLennie is the child out of the two men, as you can tell how he talksand acts around George and throughout the whole book. Being a manLennie lacks a lot of language, which I think that he never attended alot of school. Examples "look George, look what I done!" this isimmature language. This kind of behaviour makes George the father typefigure, so he would be the defender.John Steinbeck relates to Lennie, in the theme of nature, bydescribing his walk, and some of the things he does in relation to theanimals like the way he drinks from the lake as Steinbeck describeshim as a horse that puts its whole head into the water and slurps.This links in to the theme of natures, because of the use of animaldescriptions that Steinbeck uses throughout the book, which is veryimportant to this novel because in the beginning of the book, Naturewas introduced straight away. Steinbeck's describes the surroundingsin such detail, that he uses a whole page to describe the forest (which is in the beginning of the book) which gives the readers a goodimaginative view of what Steinbeck is writing.George and Lennie have an abnormal relationship. They are two friends,one needs the other more .George often gets very frustrated towardsLennie, which also shows that George cares. George loves Lennie verymuch and will always be a friend to him and so does Lennie. Lenniecould not live without him because George does everything for him.Between George and Lennie, George is the one that is mainly incontrol, he cooks, finds them jobs finds them a place to sleep andbecause of this, they always travel together, where one goes, theother one follows like a duck and her ducklings.George travels with Lennie because Lennie would not be able to surviveon his own. These two men share the same dreams but George knows inreality, it is not going to happen.Later on in the story Candy has now been introduced to the book as theold swapper. He is tall, stooped shoulders and has white whiskers.When you first see him, he is very friendly, although he is a littleweary of newcomers. His only friend is his dog that he has had sincehe was a little boy which symbolises that he is very lonely whichrefers to the theme of loneliness. When he gets to know people, hebegins to trust them; he opens up and strikes a conversation with hisnew friends just as he did with Lennie. A little further on in thestory as they become very close together and even share each othersdream. In the future he looses both his dog and Lennie and can'treally prevent Lennie's death but tries to prevent his dog's death,but this fails. This shatters Candy's dreams because he cannot sharehis dream with his long companion.In Chapter 4, Crooks is introduced. He is the only coloured (black) person on the ranch and this is where the theme of loneliness comesinto play. Crooks is a stable buck. He has a crooked spine, and hiseyes lay deep in his head, he is lined with deep black wrinkles andhas thin tightened lips. Again relating to the theme of loneliness,Crooks lives by himself in a shed because he is the only Black man,this is why he can afford to leave all of his belongings lying around.He has got his own collection of items like books, shoes and his owncopy for the California civil code which indicates that he knows hisrights and does not want to be taken advantage of. Eventually Crooksand Lennie are talking about if Lennie could live without George andabout crook's childhood explaining why his father never let him playwith other kids and why he is so lonely. When he is speaking withLennie about his childhood, he is speaking like it is still happeningor it has recently happened. This is a very similar story to his lifeat that present time. Being the only coloured man, Crooks is treatedas an outcast, as racism was very high in those days which forces himto spend his time reading while the others are playing card games.Crooks become very bitter due to the fact that everyone ill treatshim which makes him feel hurt.In the next chapter Curley is introduced to the story. He is theboss's son, he has a wife, she has dark hair that reaches down to hershoulders, her eyes are quiet close together and has pink small lipswith very pale skin. The book does not mention anything about her namewhich suggests that she does not know who her parents are and does nothave an identity. She behaves like she is not Curley's wife and thatshe is single so she flirts with a lot of the men behind Curly's back.She would say things like "now that we're alone what do you want todo". To try and tempt the man. In doing this, all the men try as hardas they can to stay away from her because they know that she istrouble and know how Curley feels about his wife.Curley's wife does this because she wants attention, again, related tothe theme of loneliness. All the farmers speak really bad of herbecause of her being flirtatious they also are frightened to talk toher because they fear Curley, and he would think that something isgoing on; plus he has the authority to get them fired or to shootthem. She married Curly to get some sort of status and to have anidentity but she never liked him anyway. When she describes her lifeon the ranch, she says that her life is boring, that no one pays anyattention to her and that she gets treated like a little girl.Curley's wife often dreams about herself becoming an actress. At theend of the novel, her loneliness causes Lennie's death.Before Lennie's death, Curley's wife and Lennie were talking in thebarn whilst everyone else was playing games. They began talking toeach other about each others dreams.They both talked about each others dreams and what they wanted to doin their life. Lennie has a fascination of stroking things. He wasstroking Curley's wife's hair, he began to stroke her hair so hard,that he lost control and broke her neck.This has a big impact on George, Lennie and Candy's relationship, asCurley wants to kill Lennie. As a result to this, George has to killLennie before he gets killed by Curly.Loneliness will always end in tragedy and dreams will rarely becomereality. True Friendship never ends.