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Symbolism in of mice and men essay
Of mice and men literary elements
Symbolism in of mice and men essay
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Body Paragraph 1 When someone doesn’t achieve their dreams , they feel insecure which makes them have hatred towards people that are happy. In chapter 3, Curley comes into the bunkhouse to look for his wife and because of this, the men in the bunkhouse start laughing and make fun of him. Lennie also starts laughing at the thought of his dream farm. Curley thought Lennie was laughing at him so he attacked him, “ Come on, ya big bastard. Get up on your feet. No big son-of-a-bitch is gonna laugh at me. I’ll show you who’s yella. Lennie looked helplessly at George, and then he got up and tried to retreat”(62). Curley is insecure about his small size because that ruined his dream of becoming a boxer. When he walks in the room to look for his wife, the men start laughing at him and he feels that they were making fun of his …show more content…
Lennie is day dreaming/laughing about the dream farm, but Curley gets the wrong idea from Lennie laughing. He thought that Lennie was laughing at him. The scene of everyone laughing at Curley made him furious and he went for the easiest target to take his anger out on. Lennie. We already know that Curley hates big guys and that he doesn’t joke around when he fights. As shown in the second part of the quote, Lennie “helplessly looked at George, and then he got up and tried to retreat” meaning that Lennie was confused and forlorn. Steinbeck uses “helplessly” to show how Lennie feels about Curley approaching to him and that he doesn’t know what to do thus looking at George. In other words, because of his size and his dream not being a reality, Curley can’t stand people that are bigger than him. Towards the end of the story, Curley’s wife comes inside the barn where Lennie was and tells him what her life was before she married Curley. “Well, a show come through, an’ I met one of the actors. He says I could go with that show. But my ol’ lady wouldn’ let me. She says
One of Lennie's many traits is his forgetfulness. He easily forgets what he is supposed to do, but he somehow never forgets what he is told. An example of how Lennie is forgetful is when he has the mice in his pocket and when he went to pet them they bit his finger. “Lennie picked up the dead mouse and looked at with a sad face. When they bit him he pinched them, and by doing that he crushed their heads” (page 5) . This is important because he knew that if he squeezed their heads they would die, but since he is forgetful, he squeezed anyway. Another example of how Lennie is forgetful is when he grabbed Curley's hand and crushed it. “ Curley’s fist was swinging when Lennie reached for it. Lennie squeezed on until George came running in shouting ‘let go’. The next moment Curley was on the ground wailing while he held his crushed hand” (page 64). This event is important because Lennie had held on, not knowing what to do next, until George told him what to do. A final exampl...
Curley's wife, an accident that seals his own fate and destroys not only his dreams but George's and Candy's as well. In the beginning Lennie used to pet mice that his Aunt Clara used to give him, he would always end up killing them because he didn't know his own strength. Lennie never killed any pet or person purposely; he pets too roughly and kills them accidentally. An example of his rough tendencies is in the first chapter (page7) when Lennie wants to keep a dead mouse and George wouldn't let him Lennie says" Uh-uh. Jus' a dead mouse, George.
Which then brings me to the next scenario in the book when a little more damage happening. “Let go Lennie” (Steinbeck 63) is what George shouted when Lennie was essentially breaking Curleys hand into little pieces. The quote resembles George having to keep Lennie from crushing Curley's hand even more. Lennie is strong but lennie can't seem to realize or make it click in his head because of Lennie's
“The best laid schemes o’ mice and men, Gang aft agley often go wrong, And leave us nought but grief and pain, For promised joy!” Robert Burn’s quote makes us believe that even the best laid out plans for joy often go wrong and brings us grief and pain. George and Lennie’s plan was for a better future. The future where they didn’t take commands from someone; where they took care of themselves. As George and Lennie keep talking about the farm and more people joining in on the plan, it looks like it might happen. But with the foreshadowing through this quote: “Look, Lennie. I want you to look around here. You can remember this place, can’t you? The ranch is about a quarter mile up that way. Just follow the river. (15)” This quote foreshadows Lennie messing up and it creating a larger gap between the dream farm and them. When Lennie kills Curley's wife, the idea of the dream farm slowly starts to disappear. As George finds out about what had happen, he realizes that plan for a farm was just an idea, an illusion. “—I think I knowed from the very first. I think I knowed we’d never do her. He usta like to hear about it so much I got to thinking maybe we would”
Lennie is not so much stereotyped, but rather trapped because of his size. Because Lennie is so big, Curley thinks he has to prove something by beating up Lennie. Lennie gets on Curley’s bad side when he didn’t do anything wrong. Lennie is then forced to fight. " ‘I don’t want no trouble,’ he said plaintively.
Mr. Curley’s has a dream to be an important and to be a powerful factor on the ranch. Mr. Curley is greedy when it comes to possessing power over those who work on the ranch. An example of his arrogance would be when he tells Lennie, “Well, nex’ time you answer when you’re spoke too.” (Steinbeck 26). Mr. Curley talks condescendingly to the men on the ranch especially Lennie. Mr. Curley doesn’t feel like feeling in competition with other men when it comes to having power on the ranch. Curley might feel insecure about his size which is why “He hates big guys. He’s alla time picking scraps with big guys.” (Steinbeck 26), Curley almost feels intimidated by the bigger men working for him by demonstrating his power that he holds over them. He
Curley 's wife observes that Lennie is "jus ' like a big baby" (Steinbeck 99) and invites him to stroke her soft hair. Lennie begins to feel her hair and likes it very much indeed, which leads him to pet it too hard. When she started to complain, he panicked and started to try to silence her. He was afraid that George would not let him be part of the dream anymore if Curley 's wife got mad at what he did. So he 's shaking her to try to protect his part in the dream but he kills her and the dream too.
Curley thinks that Lennie is making fun of him when he laughs so Curley throws punches as lennie tries to explain that he wasn't laughing at him. Eventually after a couple blows Lennie crushes Curley's hand in his own. Curley refuses to listen to Lennie and again immediately goes straight to violence and attacking Lennie. Had he listened he could have avoided a crushed hand, being embarrassed and shamed because he always bragged about being a great boxer.
Due to child like qualities, Lennie is a person which would be easy prey and a vulnerable person. Lennie is a vulnerable person who is quite dumb. His has an obsession for touching soft thing and this will often lead him in to trouble. But poor Lennie is an innocent person who means no harm to anybody. When he and Curley get into a fight Lennie is too shocked to do any thing. He tries to be innocent but, when told to by George grabs Curley’s fist and crushes it. George is Lennie’s best friend and Lennie does every thing he tells him to do as demonstrated in the fight with “But you tol...
“Then Curley’s rage exploded.Come on ya big bastard . Get up on your feet. No big son-of-a-bitch is gonna laugh at me I’ll show ya who’s yella”.(62)Lennie was smiling and thinking about the ranch that George talked to him about and how they would make a living out of the farm. Also, he was thinking about how there would be bunnies that he could pet and feed.He was daydreaming in the worst moment. Curley thought that Lennie was smiling and laughing at him for having a “Glove fulla Vaseline”. This part of the dialogue also tells us that Curley gets frustrated or mad easily. THey say his rage exploded, he made a tiny situation into a major attention drawer. “Curley’s like a lot of little guys. He hates big guys.He’s alla time picking scraps with big guys.”(26) The author describes Curley as a hatred person.He gets the wrong intention.Curley according to the passage liked to pick on others and knowing that Lennie was a sensitive fella he took advantage of that. He had fun doing this but Lennie did not get any positive output of this only negative outcomes. Curley wanted to start a fight just because he thought Lennie was laughing at him when he
...od to himself. During this scene, you get to really see how their friendship, the bravery and courage of George and the shear companionship that they had drove George to do what he did. If George did not do, what he did then Curley would have shot him like how Carlson killed Candy's dog. If George let Curley kill Lennie, he would have the same regret as Candy had for not shooting his dog himself. When Lennie killed Curley's wife, he had not only wrecked his life but the person he cared most for, George. Not to forget Curley's wife and Candy. Curley's wife lost her life and Candy lost the dream as well as George. So you see how important Lennie was in the sense of keeping the dream of owing a farm and "living of the fatta the land" alive. So although George may not have seen it at the time, but Lennie was as much of the key to the dream as he was the destruction of it.
Due to Lennie’s immense size; Curley falls in hatred with him and despises his every action. Such cruelty is emphasised when Curley is being teased by Candy and Lennie smiles at a memory of his own, to which Curley replies, “ ‘What the hell you laughin’ at?’... He slashed at Lennie with a left and then smashed down on his nose with a right.”[pg.70-71]. Curley’s pugnacious personality and his paranoia motivated him to attack Lennie; who was oblivion to his actions. However, after George’s instructions; Lennie does not hold back and defends himself by crashing Curley’s hand. Steinbeck explores the human nature of people during physical fights by deliberately provoking prejudiced arguments between characters. While Lennie does not intentionally show cruelty, the way he defends himself hurts Curley’s hand, thus demonstrating an accidental form of physical
Curley comes off as a bully to other characters because he always gets into a fight with other people on the ranch due to his hatred of other men being stronger, taller and superior. “Curley's like a lot of little guys. He hates big guys. He's alla time picking scraps with big guys. Kind of like he's mad at 'em because he ain't a big guy.” (Steinbeck 26). This quote portrays that Curley picks on huge men to fight with since he is no elated about being a miniature. Curley is often noticed by others on the ranch, for example, “S’pose Curley jumps a big guy an’ licks him. Ever’body says what a game guy Curley is.” (Steinbeck 26). This quote shows the opinion of others on the ranch by saying that he likes getting into fights, he always involved in every fight to show how strong he
While there were other elements at play, Lennie had to do with the majority of them. Not only his mental disability, which often got both him and George into trouble, but his inability to recognize his own strength. This leads to him accidentally killing Curley’s wife. He snapped her neck without even realizing that he had. “And then she was still, for Lennie had broken her neck.” (Steinbeck, 5) - this quote tells what happened to her, and he does not know that he did it. Curley, given his already hostile disposition towards Lennie, is beyond furious. He intends to kill Lennie. So, in his cleverness, George misleads them, and goes to find Lennie at his sanctuary, where he goes whenever there’s trouble. George took Carlson’s gun with him, realizing and knowing what he had to do. When he found Lennie, they chatted for a while, and George made sure Lennie was distracted. He then raised the gun to the back of Lennie’s head and pulled the trigger, instantly killing Lennie. This is commonly known as a “mercy killing”. Another example of a mercy killing is bringing your pet, whether it be old, diseased, injured, etc, to the vet to have it put down, put to sleep, etc. George did this not only for Lennie, out of benevolence as opposed to what Curley might do, but for himself and for the greater good. Case in point, this unforeseen event dissipates the dream, as George shared it with Lennie, and with Lennie out of the picture, there’s no reason to continuing said dream, if a major part of it is gone and
Again, Curley cannot help himself from starting tension when he picks on Lennie for not speaking up. Candy warns George that “He hates big guys. He’s alla time picking scraps with big guys” (Steinbeck 26). This foreshadows that Curley and Lennie will get into a brawl later on due to Curley’s automatic jealousness of men who are bigger than him, such as Lennie. By prejudging someone, Curley proves the point that humans easily get jealous and will start an unnecessary fight for their own sake of societal security and acceptance. Hence, people are selfish and will usually do anything so that they may be viewed with more respect. Even Lennie, who is innocent and seemingly harmless, brings out his own dark side. First, he kills a mouse while he is in the woods just for the sake of having something to pet. Then, Lennie accidentally kills a puppy and realizes, “Now maybe George ain’t gonna let me tend no rabbits, if he fin’s out you got killed” (Steinbeck 83). By killing the mouse and then a larger puppy, Lennie is gradually becoming more skilled at execution. This foreshadows that he may tragically do the same to a more important living being by continuing the trend. Also, he shows his selfishness after he murders the puppy by only worrying if it will ruin his chance of tending to the rabbits at his future farm. He obviously does not care about the well being of the puppy that he has just murdered. He only worries about what will happen to him. The greediness and inability of Curley and Lennie to properly interact with other beings show that they only care about themselves and have pugnacious