An analysis of Of Mice and Men By Medical Student X

Of Mice and Men was written by the great American writer John Steinbeck. Of Mice and Men is a novel. The original publisher was Covici Friede, but Cappelen published the book in Norway. The novel was originally published in the United Kingdom in 1937. Even though the narrator is a third person omniscient, John Steinbeck manages to show how several of the characters think. As an example we can take a look at Lennie. We are never directly told that Lennie likes to pet soft things in the first chapter, but on the other side Steinbeck mange to tell us this by the way George talk to Lennie about why he kept that dead mouse. Before moving ahead to the setting, we are briefly going to have a look at John Steinbeck`s life and accomplishments. John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California, in 1902. He graduated in 1919 from Salinas High School, and was already then showing a lot of potential as a writer, by writing for the school magazine. Steinbeck never got a university degree, even though he attended Stanford University in California. After leaving the university in 1925, Steinbeck went to New York. After a short period in New York as a journalist, Steinbeck went back to the West Coast. It was first in 1935 that John Steinbeck got his breakthrough as a writer. Of Mice and Men was his first successful book. His most successful novel The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939. The Grapes of Wrath is considered to be one of the best American novels ever written. One thing that really repeats itself in Steinbecks writing is that the protagonist often is a hard working man, with his weak spot, and at the same time a good working spirit. Almost all of Steinbeck`s novels take place in one or another region of the United States of America. One of the reasons behind this is that John Steinbeck uses a lot of his own personal experiences in several of his novels. One of these novels is Of Mice and Men. It was John Steinbeck who actually said this in an interview in December 1937. In this interview Steinbeck said that he himself had worked in the areas were the story is set to. One of the other things he said was that Lennie is a real person, who ended up in an asylum in California. Something else is that John Steinbeck in this interview said that the true Lennie killed a ranch foreman, and not a girl. John Steinbeck was recognized with the Nobel Prize for Literature in the later years of his life (1962), and he died in 1968. The setting according to geographical place is quite simple to determine. We are able to say this because John Steinbeck gives us this information in the beginning of the novel. What he tells us is that they are a few mile south of Soledad, close to the Salinas River. Something else is that we are told that the Gabilan Mountains is within eye site. All of these places are in California. Steinbeck gives us this information on page 23 (the beginning of the first section). This information is actually confirmed on page 95, when Crooks says that; I ain`t a southern negro, I was born right here in California. He state that they are in Soledad later on in that same paragraph. While we can easily say where it happened, when are a little more complicated. One thing we can say for shore is that it`s after 1905. The reason is that we on the last sentence on page 91

(continues on page 92), are told that Crooks has an old copy of the California civil code from 1905. At the same time this is the only information Steinbeck gives us in the novel, in other words we have to rely on guess work to determine the setting according to time. Therefore one of things we can use is that Crooks is looked at as an outcast because he is black, or as the books state it a negro. Something else is that it has to be before 1937 (the publishing year). Other stuff that has to pay a big role in our guess is that the American dream and the ranch life are very central elements in the book. At the same time we cannot afford to forget the great depression, since we are told that ranch-hands often travel from ranch to ranch, and that it was rare to have a permanent job. It is Slim who tells us this, when he talks about how weird it is that George and Lennie (two ranch-hands) travels together. On the bases of all of the things mentioned over, we can be pretty shore that the novel is set to the beginning of the 1930s. There are many characters in Of Mice and Men, although Lennie Small stands out as the protagonist. At the same time we can`t look away from the rest of the characters, since all of them (except the ranch owner) plays a significant role in the Novel. Some of the other characters that plays a major role are George Milton, Slim, Curley, Candy, Curley`s wife, Carlson. Lennie Small is mentally retarded, and is a huge person. He cannot travel around, and depends on George for every day work, as well as earning a living. Lennie likes to pet soft and nice things. This is often the thing that leads him to trouble. Something else is that Lennie is very powerful and that often lead him to hurt people or animals (specially mouse), simply because he himself is not aware of his strength. George Milton is Lennies best friend. George is a little and smart ranch hand. George is the person that gets Lennie out of trouble. This has cost him his job a couple of times. On the other side Lennie dose everything George tells him to do. The one thing that really bond George and Lennie together is their dream of one day owning their own place. This dream actually resembles the American Dream. Candy is an old man who sweeps the floor in the bunkhouse. Candy has lost one of his arms in a ranch accident. After Candy`s old dog dies, Candy join in on George and Lennie`s plan to buy their own house and land. Crooks are the only black worker on the ranch. Crooks are treated like an outcast by the other workers. Curley on the other side is the boss only son and a boxer. Curley is small, and thats why he isnt able to stand Lennie or any other large bloke. He often looks for fights so that he can make up for his size and show up a bit. Slim is the best worker on the ranch, and an authority among the ranch hands. Curley`s wife is described as a beautiful women. We are also told in an indirect way that she hates her life, and specially Curley. She is on a constant lookout for somebody to talk whit and spend some time with. This novel is about Lennie Small and George Milton. They are both ranch-hands. Lennie and George travel and work together. The one thing that really binds them together is their common dream, about owning their own house. When the novel starts George and Lennie are on their way to another ranch they are going to work on. Before Lennie and George arrive at the ranch, we are told how George and Lennie are. Something else of significant importance that happens in the first chapter is that we are told

how George and Lennie had to run away from the city they used to work in before and secondly about the dream George and Lennie share. The next day they report at the ranch. At the ranch they talk with the boss (it is actually George who stands for the talking), and after a short conversation, the boss hires them both. Afterwards they talk with Candy who basically tells them how things work on the ranch. During their conversation with Candy, the boss loud mouth son Curley walks in to the bunkhouse. Curley then almost gets in a fight with Lennie, but George is able to talk them out of the tight spot. When George and Lennie are alone in the bunkhouse, Curley`s wife comes in and, starts talking and openly flirting with them. Lennie then says that he really find her attracting, however George tells Lennie to stay away from her, as she only means trouble in Georges eyes. After a while the other ranch hands returns from the field. Thats when George and Lennie meet Slim and the rest of the gang. They then get to know how everybody on the ranch respects Slim. Slim then make comments about how rare friendship like George and Lennie`s is between ranch-hands. The next day George tells Slim everything about his and Lennie`s relationship. At the same time Carlson (another ranchhand), continues to persuade Candy to let them shoot his old dog. When Slim says that he agrees with Carlson, Candy gives in. Then Carlson takes the dog outside and shoots it. One day Candy overhears George telling Lennie how their future house will be. Candy then asks if he can join them, and offers his lifelong earnings. The three of them forms a pact, and decide to leave after a month or two. On the other side Curley tries to tell Slim to stay away from his wife. Then both of them return to the bunkhouse and Slim mocks Curley for not being able to control his wife. Curley then tries to take his anger out on Lennie and hits him. George tells Lennie to fight back, and Lennie almost destroys Curley`s hand. Slim then tells Curley, that if he tries to fire or hurt Lennie in any other way, then he himself will make shore that he will be the laughingstock of the ranch. Curley then afraid to lose face, agree to tell everybody else that his hand was broken in an accident with one of the machines. After two days Lennie kills his puppy while he was petting it. Afraid for George`s reaction, he tries to hide the puppy away. Then Curley`s wife enters and consoles him. First Lennie tries to avoid getting in a conversation with her. Even though he end up with it any way, Curley`s wife then consoles him. She then tells Lennie of how her life with Curley is, and how she werent able to follow her dream of becoming a famous actress, and married Curley as the last solution, to get away from her boring and life and her mothers over protective hands. Then Lennie tells her about his and Georges relation and how he always has liked to pet soft things. Curley`s wife says to Lennie that he can feel her hair, if he wants to. When Lennie refused to let go of her hair and stroked even harder, she screamed for help. Lennie then tried to silence her and end up accidentally killing her, by breaking her neck. Relishing what he has done Lennie flees to the place where he and George had camped before coming to the ranch and waits for Georg, just as they had agreed on. This is actually the turning point in the novel. After some time Candy comes in the barn, looking for Lennie, and sees the dead body, and realises that Lennie must have killed her. Then all of a sudden George comes in too, and he and Candy decide that George should go back to the other ranch-hands, before Candy will come in and tell them about Candy`s wife so that nobody will say that George was involved in the killing as well. The men then decide to make a hunting party to capture Lennie, while

Whit (a ranchhand) goes to the city to get the sheriff. Having no other choice, then to join the lynching party, George joins the rest of the men. George then makes shore that he will be the first to reach Lennie. When George reaches Lennie, Lennie is surprised that George is not angry at all. George then starts talking with Lennie and tells him to look another way. Thats when George shoots Lennie (to give him an easy death) and the rest of the ranch-hands show up. This is the end of the novel. John Steinbeck actually gives us an impression that something is going to happened to Lennie, in the first chapter, when he gets George to tell Lennie that if anything happens to him, he should return to the Salinas River. In this way John Steinbeck is able to fulfil the book in great style, on the other side we are given the impression that Lennie is like a brother to George, and this does not fit with George killing Lennie. I am able to understand that he killed Lennie with what you can call a mercy shoot, at the same time it will have been better to maybe extract the book a little, and see George trying to escape with Lennie, before he end up killing Lennie as the last and best way out for himself and Lennie. The greatest symbolisation in the book is George and Lennie`s dream of having their own farm. Their dream symbolises the American Dream, and then specially being the master of their own live (self reliant). In other words it symbolise the wish and the hope for a better life. As far as themes are concerned, we end up with a couple of possible choices. One that is quite obvious is that cruelty and show of power have been made to hide personal weakness and loneliness. We can say this based on the way Steinbeck first present Curley`s wife, a manipulating women with a lot of power on the ranch. And then right before she dies we got to know how lonely she is and that she actually had been looking for somebody to talk with and spend some time with. Another example is Crooks and how he first tells Lennie how much he want companionship (friends), and then tells Lennie how George is fooling him with all this talk about their dream, and how stupid Lennie is for relying on George. The second theme we can mention is friendship and how a human sooner or later has to stand alone, without companions. We can actually see several similarities between this and the first theme. As a perineum example we can look at George and Lennie, who early on in the book seemed to have a perfect friendship, yet George had to join the ranch men and ultimately kill Lennie to protect himself. Other examples is Candy, Crooks and Curley`s wife who was looking for somebody to talk with (a companion). The only one of them who get that was Curley`s wife, who felt some kind of affection to Lennie because she knew that he was the only one of the ranch-hands that will risk talking with her (Lennie never realised the possible danger). At the same time we see that just at Lennie trust and friendship leads to her death. You can also to some point say that Slim also wanted a true friend, however then we have to rely on a little guess work about the deeper meaning of what Slim said about that George and Lennie travelled together. The last theme in my eyes is the problems with the American Dream. This is the easiest theme to argue for. The reason is simply that Lennie and Georges dream of having an own home, and all the problems they had. The same thing goes for Crooks and Candy who both wanted to be appreciated and have an own place. Curley`s wifes dream about becoming a famous actress, and how her mother comes in the way, is another example. The one thing that makes all of these dreames examples of the American Dream is that the dreamers are looking for happiness and the ideal (perfect and enjoyable) life in their eyes. Personally I found Of Mice and Men quite boring, besides this is not the kind of book I normally read. One thing is that I am used to read book that are a little harder to read, and

more fiction, and if not fiction, then quite action filled. At the same time Of Mice and Men is in my eyes a perfect example of how life was in the United States in the 1930s, and how strict the roles of the society was before. I would defiantly recommend everybody to read this because you can learn a lot about how people had it in the state in the 1920s, and 30s.