Evelyn Tapia 12-10-12 Period 2 Mr. Sainato Of Mice and Men Essay In Steinbeck’s novel “Of Mice and Men”, George and Lennie go on a journey in search of their dream. After getting kicked out of their hometown, the two men find a job settle at a ranch in Soledad. Both Lennie and George meet nice folks but their dream quickly comes to an end when Lennie accidentally causes another accident. Although people think it was Curly’s wife’s fault, I believe George and Lennie’s dream was destroyed because George didn’t pay much attention to Lennie, Lennie hadn’t listened to George, and Curly was going to kill Lennie, I believe George and Lennie’s dream was destroyed because George stopped paying attention to Lennie. George was a small tough guy that always had to watch over Lennie.
The reason I think so is because spiritual, mental, and emotional aspects are much more significant than physical aspects. The story Of Mice and Men took place during the Great Depression, where close friendship between people was rare and unusual, and George benefited because he had a companion that traveled with him and always stayed with him. Lennie told George that if he is causing too much trouble for George, he can live in a cave alone, but George did not accept. When George shot Lennie (for Lennie’s benefit) and the friendship ended, George became extremely lonesome and he desired a friend like Lennie. Back to The Mighty, Kevin and Max realized that they had something in common.
George would always say that Lennie had the tendency to put them in a bag of trouble and in fact this did happen. Over in Weed, Lennie had them run out of town when he ripped a piece of a young girl’s dress off and she ran to tell the sheriff that he attempted to rape her. “But I didn’t mean no harm” as Lennie would say, and George knew that this was true and he knew that Lennie meant no harm in shaking Curly’s wife to her death. While in Soledad, Lennie costs himself his life by accidentally killing Curly’s wife because by the time Lennie went back to the brush, everyone at the ranch was ready to kill Lennie. So instead, George meets Lennie back at the brush, trying to comfort him telling him that he’s not going to “give him Hell” and just orders him to look into the distance.
In the book George and Lennie work on the “Tyler Ranch” in the Salinas Valley, keeping going through the monotonous life with the old-fashioned and misleading “American Dream”. The book details how the dream life the two men dream of having is at times out of reach, tantalizingly close when Candy buys his way into their plans (“S’pose I went in with you guys. That’s three hundred an’ fifty bucks I’d put in...”) and how the dream is revealed to be false and snatched away at the end of the book with the death of Curley’s wife. In the 1930s the economy was in a bad way in America and most of the sought after land had been taken earlier in the history of the country. The dreams in “Of Mice and Men” are used by Steinbeck to signify characters in the book that have the potential to aspire to something better.
We have all been victims of “precious little angels” in the check-out lanes of supermarkets. My favorite “little angels” are the ones screaming at their parents and throwing themselves on the ground, because the wanted, “The Fruity Pebbles” not the Wal-Mart brand. The whole time the parent of the child is red faced and acting embarrassed. I was told as a child if screamed or whined, “I want, I want”; that would mean I would never get that item. My mother and father meant every word of that, and I knew it.
Today, me and Lennie were trying to get out of Weed ‘cause Lennie had to go and screw everything up again! The damn big bastard went to go touch a girl’s dress ‘cause it was soft and she thought she was being raped. She went off yelling and Lennie got scared so he held on even more. We had to run for miles with dozens of guys chasing after us. We finally out ran them and we got onto another bus to find a different ranch.
Mr. Lorenzo Anello (Calogero father) refuses the offer and he said he is better of driving a city bus. He avoids giving into any of their deviant behavior. Next day when Calogero was fixing his bike one of the mafia men introduced him to Sunny. When he sow Sunny, he wasn’t afraid or scare he asked Sunny why he killed that man over the parking space. Sunny reply you will understand when you grow up.
Many believe that the most significant themes of the book include phoniness, death/suicide, and “The Catcher in the Rye.” Phoniness is a tremendous structure of The Catcher in the Rye. People see Holden calling people “a phony” all the time. Being a phony means being someone who a person really isn’t, or just a typical “sheeple”. The main character Holden says numerous times in the book such as,”… they probably just met each other at a phony party.”- (Salinger, p.127) This quote is a favorite of mine because it shows Holden being what he hates the most, which is being a phony. He is doing this by being jealous, just like any other person would.
Harrison Binker Language and Literature 112 8 January 2010 Of Mice and Men: Argumentative Essay At the end of the story Of Mice and Men George makes a tough decision that can be looked at as either selfish or unselfish. George had decided that he should control Lennie’s fate since he had taken care of him for so long and he should be the one to kill Lennie, not Curley or ant of the other men. George’s act at the end of the story was not selfish because Lennie was George’s responsibility and had been for a long time and because other men were trying to kill Lennie so it was better for George to kill him than men he barely knew. As stated in the thesis statement, George had a lot to think about before making his decision
Candy spends every single day with his dog and as he admits to not noticing how bad his dog smells, Steinbeck draws our attention to how itinerant workers were the “loneliest guys in the world”. Candy, as a character touches on a theme of depression through out the story. In historical context, the classic novel “Of Mice and Men” was written in 1937, the Great Depression had started to up rise in the 1930’s. The Great Depression involved many people loosing their houses, jobs, money and much more. The Great Depression had lead on after the Wall Street Crash that had occurred in 1929 leaving people homeless and starving.