Of Mice and Mengood

A detailed Summary of Of Mice and Mengood

The novel Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, is about two men who are brought together and share few good times, such as each others company, and the more overwhelmingly the bad times. Both men fight the loneliness that was ramped during the Depression. The story begins in the foothills of Salinas, California, in the middle of the Great Depression. Here we meet two men, who are able to carry all of their possessions in a bindle, and are continually planning on how to get their own land and live off of the "fat a da land". George, the mentally stronger of the two, tells his companion Lennie, how life is going to be on this piece of land. Lennie is constantly asking George to repeat his because it makes him feel good and this is understandable because Lennie has the mental capacity of a two year old. Before the two men are able to purchase this coveted piece of land that they are after, they need to save enough money. That is the reason they go to work on a barley ranch. This ranch will change their lives forever. While at the ranch, Lennie breaks the hand of the bosses' son and then accidentally kills the wife of the son. After Lennie kills the woman, and other previous mishaps at previous jobs, George realizes that because o

Steinbeck expresses the theme of loneliness through the characters Crooks, Candy, and Curley's wife. Throughout his novel, he shows different types of loneliness. Each character is being held back by their age, their skin color, or what others will think of them. For all of these people, their dreams will never come true. Crooks will die before everyone is accepted no matter what their skin color, Candy cannot stop his aging or his dream of wanting to be accepted, and Curley's wife was killed. These three characters showed the loneliness that was present in Of Mice and Men.

The final character that John Steinbeck emphasizes isolation in is Curley's wife. She tells the men on the ranch how she is continually lonely and she tells Lennie how she could have been in movies and been a big star. The first example of how she is lonely is when she exclaims to Lennie, "Why can't I talk to you? I never get to talk to nobody. I get awful lonely." (Page 86) She tells Lennie this after he notifies her that he is not allowed to talk to her or he will get in trouble. Another example of people not wanting to talk to her is when she says, "Wha's the matter with me? Ain't I got a right to talk to nobody? What ta they think I am, anyways? You're a nice guy. I don't know why I can't talk to you." (Page 87&88) Curley's wife yearns to have men talk to her without being afraid of Curley and what he is going to do to them.

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Approximate Word count = 978
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels