Of Mice and Men Themes Loneliness of the itinerant worker If one theme can be thought of as defining the plot and symbolism of Of Mice and Men, that theme is blogger.comted Reading Time: 8 mins 29/4/ · Throughout the novel Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck portrays the prevalent theme of loneliness, along with the pervasive toll that it takes, through the depth of his characterization of George, Curley’s wife, and Crooks. One of the first characters in the novel who was struck by the effects of loneliness was George blogger.comted Reading Time: 8 mins Of Mice and Men In Of Mice and Men, it seems an incontrovertible law of nature that dreams should go unfulfilled. From George and Lennie’s ranch to Curley’s wife’s stardom, the characters’ most cherished aspirations repeatedly fail to materialize
The Theme of Loneliness in Of Mice and Men: [Essay Example], words GradesFixer
If one theme can be thought of as defining the plot and symbolism of Of Mice and Menthat theme is loneliness. In many ways, from the outspoken to the subtle such as Steinbeck's decision to set the novel near Soledad, California, a town name that means "solitude" in Spanishthe presence of loneliness defines the actions of the diverse characters in the book. The itinerant farm worker of the Great Depression found it nearly impossible to establish a fixed home.
These men were forced to wander from ranch to ranch seeking temporary employment, to live in bunk houses with strangers, and to suffer the abuses of arbitrary bosses. George sums up the misery of this situation at several points during his monologues to Lennie - "Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world.
They got no family. They don't belong no place" Of course, as George's monologue puts it, "With [George and Lennie] it ain't like that. And beyond that, they have a dream of finding a fixed place they could call home, a farm of their own. They are doing what they can to resist sinking into miserable loneliness, which seems to be the lot of so many other itinerant workers.
This dream, of course, does not come to fruition, and indeed Steinbeck seems to have designed his bleak world to preclude the possibility of escape from the cycles of loneliness and hollow companionship whether found in drink, in prostitutes, in gambling that come with financial hardship and dislocation.
And it's not just the workers - most of the characters in Of Mice and Men exhibit signs of desperate isolation, including those who can be said to have of mice and men theme essay into a permanent situation. Candythe only other character aside from Lennie and George who has an unconditional love for a fellow creature in Candy's case, his old and feeble dogis left utterly bereft when Carlson takes his dog out back and shoots it. Candy's immediate attachment to George and Lennie's plan to settle on a farm of their own can be seen as a natural emotional progression following his loss - he looks for new companionship, now that he has lost his poor dog.
Of the other characters, Crooks and Curley 's wife also show signs of desperate loneliness, though they respond quite differently. Each is isolated because of special mistreatment. Because Crooks is black, he is shunned by the other of mice and men theme essay as we see at the beginning of Chapter Four, he spends his time in his room, alone and bitter, of mice and men theme essay.
Curley's wife also spends her days hounded by her mean-spirited husband; her attempts to reach out to the other men backfire and win her the not undeserved reputation of a flirt. Both characters, despite their hard and bitter shells, reveal a desire to overcome their loneliness and win friends.
Their efforts hinge on Lennie, of mice and men theme essay, whose feeble-mindedness renders him unaware of the social stigmas attached to the two. Of course both episodes - Lennie's visit with Crooks in Chapter Four and his talk with Curley's wife in Chapter Five - end respectively in bitterness and tragedy.
Thus Steinbeck further reinforces the bleakness of life in his fictional world. The one man who could serve as a nonjudgmental companion cannot coexist safely with others. One of the driving forces of discontent in Of Mice and Menand of Lennie and George's dream of securing a farm, is the alienation of the working man from the land. Itinerant workers only fulfill one step in the long chain of tasks leading from planting to harvest - they seed the earth, or they haul in the crop, and then they move on, never establishing a connection with the cycles of the natural world.
George and Lennie's dream of "a few acres" addresses this alienation. They speak of their dream in terms of planting of mice and men theme essay gardening - they are eager to perform the tasks necessary to live off the land.
Their talk about raising cows and drinking their milk, about planting and tending a vegetable garden, contrasts starkly with their actual diet - cans of beans with if they're lucky ketchup. The concept of alienation from nature owes much to the writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and other communist thinkers. They argued that the rise of industrial economy corresponds to a loss of contact with the natural processes of life. Where a human being was once connected, of mice and men theme essay, like the animal he is, to the whole of life the production of food, shelter, clothing, etc.
This state of alienation, according to Marx, can fuel a discontent among the workers that leads to revolution. Steinbeck allows us to glimpse at a general malaise that might lead to a "soft revolution" of sorts in Chapter Four, when the outcasts of the ranch fantasize about starting their ranch together. As with most things in this tragic novel, their dreaming comes to naught. During the novel's opening and closing chapters, Steinbeck describes the activity of the natural world.
These passages are rich and interpretable in many directions: it's worth singling out the first of the novel's many allusions to rabbits. Steinbeck writes that the rabbits happily "sit on the sand," and are then disturbed by the arrival of George and Lennie - they "hurr[y] noiselessly for cover" 2. Not until later does this little detail take on a richer significance - rabbits, we learn, represent for Lennie and George, to a lesser extent the dream of obtaining a farm of their own and living "off the fatta the lan'" The scattering of the rabbits at the beginning suggests already that this dream will prove elusive.
Because Lennie thinks in concrete terms of his own pleasure, he equates the tending of rabbits - whose soft fur he wishes to pet - with the attainment of utter happiness. Thus he has developed a shorthand for referring to the plan George and he share to start a farm of their own - "I remember about the rabbits" 5. Lennie takes deep pride in the notion that he would be entrusted to raise the rabbits, to protect them, to feed them out of their alfalfa patch.
He places the entirety of his future happiness on this one image of caring for rabbits. This dream of the rabbits becomes literally a dream at the end of the novel, when Lennie hallucinates a giant rabbit who tells him that he will never be allowed to tend rabbits.
This highlights the extent to which Lennie bases his entire life around the goal of tending rabbits. Indeed, of mice and men theme essay, his only thought after doing something "bad" - whether killing a puppy or killing Curley's wife, all "bad things" seem roughly equivalent in Lennie's mind - is that George will not allow him to tend the rabbits.
The manner in which he fails to of mice and men theme essay his actions in terms of good and evil, and instead views them as good or bad insofar as they are conducive to his ability to pet rabbits, reveals definitively how unfit Lennie is for society. Of Mice and Men depicts very few women - which shouldn't be surprising considering the characters with whom the novel is concerned.
These itinerant laborers don't have an opportunity to settle down with women in mutually respectful relationships, it seems. Instead, they seek the company of prostitutes for "a flop" 57 on the weekends and make due otherwise. However their attitudes toward women may be tied to their dissatisfying life, the views expressed on the subject have every reason to give the modern reader pause. George expresses respect for only two sorts of women in the novel - on the one hand, the maternal figure represented by Aunt Claraof mice and men theme essay, whose charge to take care of Lennie he has taken on as a responsibility; on the other hand, George respects prostitutes.
He says, "Give me a good whore house every time" George likes how straight-forward the arrangement at a house of prostitution is. The one major female character in the novel, who is not even given a name of her own, does not fit neatly into either category.
She is a domestic figure - after all, she is married to Curley and spends most of her time at home - and, at the same time, a flirtatious, highly sexualized figure. Her status, between domesticity and prostitution, makes her extremely problematic in the novel, a source of anxiety and unrest. She leads to trouble, as George immediately observes she will.
A reader might raise an eyebrow at Steinbeck's simple willingness to pin the role of trouble-maker on one unnamed woman. Curley's wife is regularly used as a scapegoat in the novel.
She is blamed for the lustful feelings she inspires. Even after she has been tragically killed, Candy shouts misogynist insults at her corpse.
Curley's wife's life, of mice and men theme essay, clearly, is miserable, of mice and men theme essay, yet we are not encouraged to see things from her perspective.
Even when she expresses her miserable loneliness, these episodes are followed by instances of manipulation, of threatening. Her death is hardly poignant - and indeed, her corpse is praised more in death than she was in life. The reader has every reason to question Steinbeck's motives in giving us such an unsympathetic view of this woman - and, by association, women in general.
One of the ways that Steinbeck creates such depth in his novels is that he associates certain images with multiple interpretive dimensions.
For instance, of mice and men theme essay, "the rabbits" captures Lennie's innocent love of tactile stimulation, his participation in George's dream of establishing a farm of their own, and the threat of his daunting strength.
Every cuddly thing he's touched, after all, has died - just as the dream of the rabbits dies. Another such image, though perhaps less obvious, is that of hands. Steinbeck speaks of hands regularly in Of Mice and Menmost often associating them with the common dualism of sex and violence. The image hinges on the character of Curley - a of mice and men theme essay both outspokenly pugnacious and lecherous. In the description immediately following Curley's first entrance, he is described as "handy" The term, in this first context, makes reference to his eagerness and ability to of mice and men theme essay. He is handy with his fists, so to speak.
Later in the same conversation we hear of a second association with Curley's hands. Candy says that he wears one glove "fulla vaseline" and adds, "Curley says he's keepin' that hand soft for his wife" Thus Curley's hands are tied to sex as well as violence. He fights with the one hand and keeps the other hand soft.
Of mice and men theme essay, with this association in place, it's clear why Curley is so humiliated following his fight with Lennie. Lennie crushes his hand, which thus symbolizes not only his loss in terms of fighting ability, but also in terms of sexual power. Lennie proves the better man in both senses. The defeat is thus a symbolic castration of sorts. This symbolism is reinforced when Curley's wife appears to find the big man's defeat of her husband alluring - "I like machines" Of course, Lennie has no idea that he is causing such problems in the realms of sex and violence - he cannot understand these concepts himself.
But this only reinforces the sense that such a dangerous, potent, unreflective man cannot continue to operate in the company of others. In the action and language of the novel, Steinbeck explores some of the multiple meanings embedded in the idea of "meanness. Both George and Lennie express their distaste for this sort of man, of mice and men theme essay. George says that he "don't like mean little guys" Curley's relish for violence and his constant urge to pick fights contrasts directly with Lennie's comparatively "innocent" violence.
After Lennie accidentally kills Curley's wife and buries her in the hay, George notes that Of mice and men theme essay "never done it in meanness" Lennie kills out of cuddling, or blind panic. He loves things to death. A second resonance in the concept of meanness has to do with Lennie and Curley's respective sizes - Curley is a "mean little guy.
Curley, in other words, is small not in size alone, but also in his of mice and men theme essay actions. He is of average size and terribly anxious about that. Thus he, the mean one, takes out his frustrations on Lennie, who is anything but average.
Finally, the word captures a related third meaning - that of intentionality. Curley and others act with meaning.
Of Mice And Men Key Points and Essay Plans
, time: 16:43Of Mice and Men Themes | GradeSaver
In John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men there are a lot of themes. The themes consist of friendship, loneliness, discrimination and dreams. All of these themes are important, and play immense role in the outcome at the end 19/4/ · The characters that reflect the idea of the primary theme of the novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck are Candy and Curley. The novel’s primary theme is described as the negative effects of loneliness and being an outcast in blogger.comted Reading Time: 3 mins In Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck shows the prominent themes of loneliness, the need for relationships, and the loss of dreams in the s through the novels’ character. Lennie Small, a mentally impaired man, is first introduced to us traveling with George. George, however, is not related to Lennie
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