Communism In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

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John Steinbeck’s ‘Of mice and men’ is a classic written in 1939, transcending time and in its exploration of the Marxist ideologies of the nature of humanity and their socio-economic struggles dealing with the disenfranchisement of the working class. Steinbeck’s characterization of his central figures, George and Lennie, serves to be a dramatization of the brutal capitalist system that disenfranchises its subjects of an identity and deprives them from accomplishing the American dream. In this sense, the novel communicates the notion that capitalism does not merely regulate one’s economic and political stance, rather it dictates one’s position, either alienated or contrastingly well established within the social network. Steinbeck devises his …show more content…

Upon approaching her, the responder can come to the realisation of the symbolic significance of the scene where Lennie is exposed to a force whose present mirrors his future. Steinbeck, in dominating his scene with emotional panic, frames this notion, “Lennie began to cry with fright”, coupled with her constant screaming fills the reader with a sense of unease. It is the accidental death of the wife that leads to the critical point of the novel. Drawing on Marxist ideologies, Steinbeck presents the notion that there are only two outcomes for men: the fulfilment of the American Dream or dramatically, death. This is highlighted in the tragedy of Lennie’s death. Curley’s representation of capitalism would have exacted some kind of payment. George killing him had acted as an act of mercy in a jarring and discordant world; ‘George raised the gun and steadied it…..the hand shook violently….he pulled the trigger...The crash of the shot rolled up the hills. George shivered…’ It is at the point before the final death that Lennie comes into the realisation that the dream has failed; ‘“I tried, Aunt Clara, ma’am, I tried and tried. I couldn’t help it.”’ In a world of disenfranchisement, their journey, which awakens George to the impossibility of this dream, sadly proves that ‘such paradises of freedom, contentment, and safety are not to be found in this

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