Of Mice And Men Naturalism Analysis

In the book Of Mice and Men there are many examples of naturalism. The main areas where naturalism mostly happened was in the beginning and towards the end of the book. Naturalism in its own is far more powerful than man. Steinbeck uses naturalism in the book because characters have free will but are also at risk by internal and external forces.

I think that Lennie is a good example of naturalism because his strength is something that is natural and cannot be changed easily or at all. In the book, Lennie kills curley’s wife accidently (1541). Lennie doesn’t mean to kill Curley’s wife but his internal force which was petting soft things was getting to him a lot stronger and so when Curley’s wife was telling Lennie to stop he couldn’t because he was focused on petting her soft hair so when she started moving and panicking, he began to panic which led to Lennie accidently killing Curley’s wife. Once Lennie saw what he had done he ran to where he remembered so he will be safe and him and George can go somewhere else. Lennie’s strength is shown in the scene where he kills Curley’s wife and that shows how he is compared to an animal in the book. Steinbeck says “Suddenly Lennie appeared out of the brush, and he came as silently as a creeping bear moves.” (1643).

A big external force that controls how people mostly see him is his skin color and all the bad things that come with that. There are things that he dreams of doing and becoming but he can’t achieve that because of his external force. In the book there is no respect for Crooks. “Sure. Ya see the stable buck’s a …” (593). He isn’t treated as well as all the other farm workers. In the book one of the characters says something to crooks that makes him feel bad of himself. “I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain’t funny.”