“I could get along so easy and so nice if I didn’t have you on my tail”(Steinbeck 7). If a person has a mental or physical challenge, it will have a major effect on how that person is capable of living the rest of their life. In Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck illustrates how the mental and physical challenges and state of mind of the characters makes them incapable of achieving their American Dreams. Individuals with mental challenges in the 1930’s and now a days, were and still may be considered to be worthless and not good for much. Having a physical challenge, like a missing hand, will affect the type of work someone can do, and could limit someone job opportunities. Usually when a person is told something as a child, they will believe
George with forlorn shame shook his head and whispered … “ What the hell have ay done” looking down upon the dead corpse of his fellow good companion he’d known for years and who’s … Now dead from a gunshot wound right in the head.
Loyalty and friendship play key roles in the lives of those who acknowledge its worth. Living life with whom a person loves greatly increases happiness and trust between those in the relationship. But this unity may come at a cost; true friendship requires sacrifice. Friendship and loyalty in the novella, Of Mice and Men, by expression through John Steinbeck’s interpretation, brings greater understanding to their importance of each.
“So you forgot that awready, did you? I gotta tell you again , do I ? Jesus christ, you're a crazy bastard!” George says (4-5). You can infer that the two characters have some issues with each other. In Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck shows the weaknesses that most of the characters have and the trials they face with those weaknesses. The characters such as Lennie, Crooks and Candy all have something that happens to them in the story that brings out their weaknesses. John Steinbeck portrays the effects that weak people reveal through the characters Lennie, Crooks and Candy.
Mental disabilities are struggles that many have to face. In the novel, Of Mice and Men written by John Steinbeck, Lennie is illustrated as mentally challenged man with a dense, shapeless body. He and his minder and also friend, George are wanderers. Together they travel around California in search of work as they wish to earn money so that they can follow their dreams. The pair long to buy a little house along with a couple of acres and farm animals but Lennie’s disability causes difficulties that not even George expected. This novel lets the reader into the mind of Lennie, to give us an understanding of his mentality, interests and emotions.
Disabilities can be mental : everything is in your head; and one of the characters that has mental disabilities is Lennie, society treats him in a harsh ways. When Curley comes into the bunkhouse, and sees that only George answers his questions, he screams to Lennie : “Curley stared levelly at him. ‘Well, nex’ time you answer when you’re spoke to.’ He turned toward the door and walked out, and his elbows were still bent out a little.” Lennie can’t answer Curley because of his mental conditions. Curley doesn’t seem to get it so he treats Lennie very poorly by screaming at him. George is talking about Lennie to Slim : “One day a bunch of guys was standin’ around up on the Sacramento River. I was feelin’ pretty smart. I turns to Lennie and says, ‘Jump in.’ An’ he jumps. Couldn’t swim a stroke. He damn near drowned before we could get him.” This quotation shows that people take advantage of Lennie’s disabilities just to have fun and watch him suffer. It’s not Lennie’s fault if he jumped in the river and people know that, but they still choose to treat him carelessly, and wrongly. In conclusion, we know that Lennie suffers from mental
John Steinbeck, an American novelist, is well-known for his familiar themes of depression and loneliness. He uses these themes throughout a majority of his novels. These themes come from his childhood and growing up during the stock market crash. A reader can see his depiction of his childhood era. In Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck shows the prominent themes of loneliness, the need for relationships, and the loss of dreams in the 1930s through the novels’ character.
Believe it or not, there’s a lot of problems in the novel, Of Mice and Men, which portrays plenty of different social issues within the text and the movie. There were loads of racism, sexism, and ageism presented both in the film and in the book, these issues paved the way to the theme and essence of the overall story. The book Of Mice and Men, is about two different people, Lennie and George. There’s numerous of evidence to show how these three problems are bestowed in the narrative.
Barbara Sher once said, “‘Isolation is a dream killer’” (qtd. in Wishcraft). In his novella, Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck scrutinizes the effects that alienation can have on society. Many characters experience loneliness throughout the novel. He illustrates the results of individuals becoming isolated from their peers. In Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck portrays characters alienated from society in order to illustrate the harmful effects of loneliness caused by discrimination.
The novel, Of Mice and Men, talk about different characters and how things were back in the Great Depression by following two ranchers, George and Lennie. When the novel first introduces the setting at the lake, it also introduced the two main characters. George is described as the one that seems to take in everything with his “restless eyes and sharp, strong features” and Lennie follows him. Lennie is described as “a huge man, shapeless of face, with large pale eyes, with wide sloping shoulders;” George and Lennie look like opposites which draws the question, Why are they traveling together? The answer becomes clear once we get into the novel but before that, Lennie starts to drink the scummy water and plays like a toddler in the lake. This shows that he has some mental disability and this is further shown when he starts to forget everything. His disability foreshadows trouble which shows that Lennie is the one that causes the most trouble because of his mental disability to forget everything, how he isn’t wanted anywhere, and how his disability ultimately ends up ruining dreams and lives.
Mental illness in America has always been a sensitive topic because people with mental illness were often times treated as inferior to the common man. Someone with a mental illness can often contribute to society just as well and sometimes better than the average person. The Great Depression was a significant period in the treatment of the mentally ill. It was one of the most difficult eras in this nation’s history. Many people faced extreme hardships. People with mental illness faced discrimination, therefore they faced aggrandized adversity. In Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck demonstrates this through Lennie, a large man with an apparent mental disability that experiences lots of problems on his journey.
Just about anyone can experience mental health problems, this is not something people should be ashamed or embarrassed about and talking about it is so much more beneficial than hiding it. Many people tend to try and hide their mental illness from other people. People tend to do this because having a mental illness can affect someone's job, social life, health, and their image. John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men demonstrates the hardships that come along with having a mental illness and demonstrates the difficulties of maintaining a normal life when society isn’t willing to give you any opportunities.
In his novel Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck uses many characters to show his assertion that man is basically evil. When Curley’s wife confronts Lennie, Crooks, and Candy in Crook’s place, she notes that the others “left all the weak ones here” (77). The “weak” ones that Curley’s wife refer to all attack each other in a vicious circular firing squad. Crooks taunts Lennie about the possibility of George not returning, and takes “pleasure in his torture” as he “[presses] forward for some kind of private victory” (71). Curley’s wife calls Candy and Lennie “a dum-dum and a lousy ol’ sheep” (78) and threatens to get Crooks “strung up on a tree” (81). Meanwhile, all the other characters are the ones that make those Lennie, Candy, Crooks, and Curley’s wife feel “weak” because they are disabled mentally, disabled physically, black, and female, respectively. In this way, Steinbeck shows that all men are basically evil as they do not lend a hand to each other and instead simply attack and prey upon each other.
.The novel Of Mice and Men was written by John Steinbeck. In Soledad, California during the Great Depression in the 1930's two men of the one named George and the other named Lennie were men who travel around working at ranches. George is the small, quick-witted one, and Lennie is the big, slow, dumb and extremely strong one. They have a dream, to have a little place all to themselves, without anyone bothering them. Their dreams are shattered though, when Lennie, who doesn't know his own strength, gets in trouble. In the pursuit of love, happiness and the American dream, man becomes a victim of his own circumstances and discovers that the good life becomes impossible for humanity to obtain and contains
In all of his works, John Steinbeck focuses on the hardships of economically and socially challenged communities. He wrote around the Great Depression era of the 1930s, which would influence the situations of all of the characters he creates. He uses settings which are close in proximity to where he was born, the town of Salinas, California. Of Mice and Men, one of Steinbeck’s most well-known works, is set in Soledad, a small town in a valley adjacent to the Salinas River. Another one of his works, Cannery Row, takes place on Monterey Bay just west of the town of Salinas. Steinbeck’s portrayal of the struggles of the characters he creates are so realistic because of his true experiences. For example, Doc in Cannery Row is based on his lifelong friend Ed Ricketts, and the ranch he describes in Of Mice and Men is based off of one owned by Speckrels Sugar where he worked when he was younger. Steinbeck uses setting to critique society during the Great Depression. Though one novel is set in a coastal community and the other rural, their outcomes are extremely similar. The characters in each novel find it difficult to gain a job and keep one while living in poor conditions. No character turns out successful and instead fail to fulfill any dream they may have, such as Lennie’s dream of owning a farm with George and being able to own and care for rabbits. The West was seen by lower class farmers as opportunity and a new beginning throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth