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Literary critique of mice and men
Literary analysis of mice and men
Literary exploration of mice and men
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The harsh reality is one which hit everyone in America in the 1930. People found work hard to find and crime was on the uprise. This meant, unfortunately, that innocent people were the easy prey and, as we see in the Of Mice and Men, there were plenty of characters that were easy prey. Of Mice and Men characters have and do thing that make them vulnerable in way which do cause trouble. In this essay, that harsh reality and easy prey will be shown through to see which characters are the most vulnerable. Due to child like qualities, Lennie is a person which would be easy prey and a vulnerable person. Lennie is a vulnerable person who is quite dumb. His has an obsession for touching soft thing and this will often lead him in to trouble. But poor Lennie is an innocent person who means no harm to anybody. When he and Curley get into a fight Lennie is too shocked to do any thing. He tries to be innocent but, when told to by George grabs Curley’s fist and crushes it. George is Lennie’s best friend and Lennie does every thing he tells him to do as demonstrated in the fight with “But you tol...
town they were heading to, he must come back to the pond and hide in
One of Lennie's many traits is his forgetfulness. He easily forgets what he is supposed to do, but he somehow never forgets what he is told. An example of how Lennie is forgetful is when he has the mice in his pocket and when he went to pet them they bit his finger. “Lennie picked up the dead mouse and looked at with a sad face. When they bit him he pinched them, and by doing that he crushed their heads” (page 5) . This is important because he knew that if he squeezed their heads they would die, but since he is forgetful, he squeezed anyway. Another example of how Lennie is forgetful is when he grabbed Curley's hand and crushed it. “ Curley’s fist was swinging when Lennie reached for it. Lennie squeezed on until George came running in shouting ‘let go’. The next moment Curley was on the ground wailing while he held his crushed hand” (page 64). This event is important because Lennie had held on, not knowing what to do next, until George told him what to do. A final exampl...
Curley's wife, an accident that seals his own fate and destroys not only his dreams but George's and Candy's as well. In the beginning Lennie used to pet mice that his Aunt Clara used to give him, he would always end up killing them because he didn't know his own strength. Lennie never killed any pet or person purposely; he pets too roughly and kills them accidentally. An example of his rough tendencies is in the first chapter (page7) when Lennie wants to keep a dead mouse and George wouldn't let him Lennie says" Uh-uh. Jus' a dead mouse, George.
John Steinbeck, the author of the novel Of Mice and Men uses many stylistic devices and description in chapter one to give the reader a deeper understanding of what may occur throughout the novel. Firstly, the name of the city the two protagonists, Lennie and George, are heading to is called “Soledad,” which means loneliness in Spanish; this is symbolism and foreshadowing because it can mean that as they get closer to the city, their relationship as friends may deteriorate and they may end up alone towards the end. Furthermore, this could also mean that there can be major problems in further chapters because of Lennie’s unpredictable behaviour due to his mental disabilities. In relation to Robert Burns’s poem, “To a Mouse,” the author may be
In Of Mice and Men, the author attempts to portray the hardships that a man attempts to face yet fails to withstand. Set in the post-depression era, the book depicts the harsh truth of the
When Curley approaches Lennie for laughing, Lennie attacks Curley in defense. “Curley’s fist was swinging when Lennie reached for it. The next minute Curley was flopping like a fish on a line, and his closed fist was lost in Lennie’s big hand. George ran down the room. “Leggo of him, Lennie. Let go” (62). In this quote, Lennie’s ridiculous power proves to be harmful as he ends up crushing Curley’s hand in fear. Lennie is typically a very peaceful person, but when he feels threatened, the resulting damage can be overwhelming because of the lack of sense needed to control his strength. When Curley’s wife screams for Lennie to let go of her hair, Lennie panics and ends up breaking her neck. “He shook her then, and he was angry with her. ‘Don’t you go yellin’,’ he said, and he shook her; and her body flopped like a fish. And then she was still, for Lennie had broken her neck” (91). In these lines, it is revealed that in his desperation to not get in trouble, Lennie ended up breaking the neck of Curley’s wife, which is another indicator of his lack of sense and his physical prowess. His child-like desire to “tend the rabbits” made him realize that he should not get in trouble, and when he found himself in that situation, he became angry and accidentally killed her. This shows how Lennie’s immaturity and great power makes him
Character Assessments of Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck 'Of Mice and Men' is written by John Steinbeck. The story is based in
An agitated Curley got into a fight with Lennie because Lennie was laughing at how Curley couldn’t keep his wife in check. While Lennie is being beaten up by the experienced fighter that Curley is, Lennie hears George telling him to fight back so he grabs Curley’s hand and crushes it to a pulp with the ease of a knife slicing soft butter. The effortlessness by which Lennie crushes Curley’s hand is frightening and it requires the combined effort of Slim and George to pry Lennie’s hand off of Curley. George knows that this kind of strength will be a consequence of nothing positive, and the only way to prevent this is to kill Lennie. Also, while petting his pup in the barn, the pup bites Lennie because he had done something it didn’t like, this results in Lennie breaking the pups neck therefore killing it. This is another display of Lennie’s robust strength being combined with his five-year-old mentality, to produce harm to
A form of theater that originated from Ancient Greece was the tragedy. The protagonist of this form of entertainment was the tragic hero. Modern authors use tragic heroes to evoke emotions that allow readers to experience a catharsis. In Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck characterizes George as a tragic hero in order to demonstrate the harsh reality of the American Dream.
George is constantly wanting him to remember things he simply can’t. However, the situation get worse when they get to the farm. The owner son, who was a fighter, is threatened by Lennie’s physical appearance. “Curley’s like a lot of little guys. He hates big guys. He’s alla time picking scraps with big guys” (Steinbeck 26). Curley is provoking Lennie and wanting to fight with him. However Lennie does not want to fight, and clearly states “ I don’t want no trouble” (Steinbeck 29). This is not good for Lennie because this only worsens his disability because he becomes more nervous.
In the universe, there are many people who can be unfair to one another. The weak people are abused by the strong. Cruelty starts from childhood throughout adulthood. In the story “Of the Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck there are many weak characters that are abused by the strong. Lennie and Candy are mostly ‘picked on’ in the story. In the novella Steinbeck demonstrates that there are a lot of cruelty going on, such as when Lennie and Candy got abused because Lennie would always get harassed by Curley and Candy would always get mistreated by Carlson, because he takes advantage of shooting Candy’s dog.
When one thinks of innocence people often think of harmless, adorable, cuddly small things however innocence is not as simple or straightforward as it would seem. In Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men he uses the innocence of Lennie to show how people in general don’t mean to cause problems but often do.
Of Mice and Men is a tragedy novella based on the nature of human existence, and the falseness of the American dream. Two migrants, George and Lennie, get off a bus miles away from the California farm where they are going to start work. George is a small, dark man with “sharp, strong features.” His stalwart companion, Lennie, is quite his opposite, a gargantuan with a “shapeless” face and a brawny body..
1. In the novel of Of Mice and Men an example of a cruel being is Curley. He is a champion prizefighter who is the boss’s son in the story. Curley is a man who thinks he's a class above everybody else. He is an ill tempered man who goes around starting fights with men bigger than he. A good example for a kind fellow would be Lennie. Lennie is a big man who acts childish. He means no harm and he relies on George because of his disabilities. Man who is a mix of cruelties and kindness is George. George has a dream that is the same as Lennie’s dream which to have the farm of their dreams. He sometimes regrets having to put up with Lennie but at the same time he is devoted to him.