The Instrumentalisation Of The Human Being

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THE INSTRUMENTALISATION OF THE HUMAN BEING IN THE BOOK OF MICE AND MEN Two of the most important moments in the book “Of mice and men” are Lennie and Candy’s dog death; the reason of that is because both died under non-natural circumstances. The aim of this paper is to explain that the death of those characters was due to an instrumentalist conception of the human being that rose with the beginning of the twentieth century. With the rise and development of the second industrial revolution the mind of the people suffered a new transformation; notions from the liberalism like self-interest and individualism started to leave aside ideas as common wealth and camaraderie. In the book Of Mice and Men this characteristic is implicit in all the characters’ loneliness and also in phrases like “Well, I never seen one guy take so much trouble for another. I just like to know what your interest is”. Or “Ain’t many guys travel around together...Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other”. Another step to the instrumentalisation of the human being is the establishment of pragmatism as a philosophical approach that focus in the usefulness as a determining consideration of right conduct; we can see an example of this when Carlson said: “That dog ain’t no god to himself. I wisht somebody’d shoot me if I got old an’ a cripple”. And also when the boss said: “Well, I never seen one guy take so much trouble for another. I just like to know what your interest is”. The main interest in this new world is focus in self-preservation, as a result people or any living thing with a lack of ability in dealing with its own survival is seen as failure, as something weak that should be killed in order to keep him from suffering. Once again we can see that point in the following parts: “Got no teeth. He’s all stiff with rheumatism. He ain’t no good to you, Candy.

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