Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck | Analysis

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck AnalysisJohn Steinbecks figment, Of Mice and Men, was premier(prenominal) published in 1937. At the time, America was still suffering the grim aftermath of the depression and the itinerant workers who form the basis of the novel were very a great deal within the consciousness of a nation separated by wealth yet driven by the idea of the American dream. Steinbecks novel is, however, essentially a tale of loneliness, of men struggling alone against a cold, uncaring and faceless destiny.The central protagonists, George and Lennie are, as they are proud to proclaim, different from the others because they waste each other. They are an odd couple, George the shrewd, wiry yet ultimately caring protector of the ironically named Lennie Small, who is, in fact, a huge man who doesnt cut his own strength and is mentally incapable of making the smallest of decisions for himself he relies on George completely but equally, George needs Lennie as he gives him a reason to bound going. Lennie, despite his lack of intellect, senses this because when he k instantlys George feels guilty for being angry with him, he takes advantage of the moment to manipulate George into repeating the story of their dream future, oddly the rabbits they intend to keep with which Lennie is obsessed.They are not related but Lennies aunt has brought up George and he has promised her that he go forth look after Lennie, now she has died. The secret dream they share, of building a life together on a ranch and living off the fatta the lan is central but the very prenomen of the book, taken from Robert Burns poem To a Mouse foreshadows the ultimate defeat of their dream, since it speaks of plans going wrong.The two men are en route for another in a series of ranch jobs, having been run out of Weed, the place where they previously lived and worked, because Lennie has been wrongly accused of attempted rape because of his innocent desire to touch the solid of a girls skirt again there is foreshadowing here of the tragic ending of the novel. Indeed, the whole of the book follows the circular movement conventional by the setting of the beginning of the novel and inverting descriptions used there in the ending which takes place in the same spot, where Lennie has been warned to return if anything goes wrong which inevitably it does.Upon reaching at the ranch, Steinbeck takes the opportunity to introduce the reader, via the newcomers, to a panoply of characters, all loners for one reason or another the old, maimed and dispirited sweeten, the black, crippled and isolated Crooks, the feisty and arbitrary bosss son, Curley, who is newly and unhappily married, his wife being what the others call a tramp, and the god-like lissome, to whom all the others look up and to whom they all look for an determine to idolise. Steinbeck uses each of these in a different way to show facets of loneliness and isolation, with only Slim seeming beyond the idea that he is an object of pity.From the first, George is mysophobic that the aggressive bosss son, Curley, will cause trouble for himself and Lennie because he is an amateur boxer who sees Lennies size as a challenge and is dexterous. However, when he is involved in a violent incident with Curley through no fault of his own, Lennie crushes his hand and Slim warns him that if anything is said about it, he will make Curley look a fool, the thing he knows Curley fears most.Indeed, Steinbeck perpetually uses Slim as his centre of consciousness in the novel, the man in whom George confides, in a carefully choreographed confessional scene, for example, where even the lighting reflects the intense interrogative. Slim is also the only one of the men who appears to have any kind of relationship with Crooks. It is no coincidence, either, that it is Slim who comforts and consoles George at the end of the book, telling him You hadda, George. I swear you hadda and leading him away.Perhaps the most co ntroversial aspect of Steinbecks novel is undoubtedly his act of women. The only female character to have a real presence in the book is Curleys wife, who appears to have married Curley on a whim, having been discomfited in her ludicrous ambition to become a film star, and is already clearly on the lookout for a better prospect. She flirts with the men, is clearly attracted to Slim, and abuses Crooks, emphasising as she does this the racial tensions of the time. The other references to women are to prostitutes and Lennies late aunt, rather oddly sharing a name with the local madam of the brothel. Steinbeck here lays himself open to the charge of sexism, peculiarly since in other works such as East of Eden, which he wrote in 1952, women are similarly portrayed as an entrapment to men, perhaps indicating a conjunctive with difficulties in his personal life.In conclusion, however, it must be said that the enduring appeal of Steinbecks powerful novel remains intrinsically the moving acknowledgment of the central relationship between George and Lennie and how their rather coincidental coming together becomes for both the defining emotion of their lives. Precisely because there are two of them, that someone, as George says, gives a damn, Steinbeck is able to highlight the loneliness of the itinerant drifters of whom he also writes movingly in The Grapes of Wrath (1939). The sharing of their dream with the desperate Candy is in a sense the beginning of the end because as it becomes almost a reality it is simultaneously broken by the intrusion of possibility symbolised by him. In Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck made a nationwide problem human and in doing so, he created characters who continue to both move and disturb.BibliographyCynthia Burkhead, Student Companion to John Steinbeck, (Greenwood Press, Westport, CT., 2002).Donald V. Coers, capital of Minnesota D. Ruffin and Robert J. DeMott, eds., After the Grapes of Wrath Essays on John Steinbeck in Honor of Tetsumaro Hayashi, (Ohio University Press, Athens, OH, 1995).Robert DeMott, Steinbecks Typewriter Essays on His Art, (The Whitston Publishing Company Troy, New York 1997).Tetsumaro Hayashi, John Steinbeck The Years of Greatness, 1936-1939, (University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL, 1993).Arthur Hobson Quinn and Appleton-Century-Crofts, The Literature of the American People An Historical and Critical Survey, (Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York 1951).Claudia Durst Johnson, Understanding of Mice and Men, the Red Pony, and the Pearl A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents, (Greenwood Press, Westport, CT., 1997).John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men, (Longman, Harlow, 2000).John Steinbeck IV and Nancy Steinbeck, The new(prenominal) Side of Eden Life with John Steinbeck, (Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY, 2001).