Of Mice And Men Sympathy Analysis

Many people try to cause sympathy in others to either get the audience to feel or think in a certain way and create an emotional response to what they are putting out there, and a big example I am sure we all seen is the dog commercial for ASPCA, where they got sad music on and pictures of abused animals, and even if you don’t like dogs and cats, it still makes you sad somehow! So as you can tell, they did a good job at creating it! But another place that creates sympathy in us is in the book, Of Mice & Men, because some of the characters have kind of a rough life. In my opinion, Curley’s wife and Lennie both have it hard in some ways, but Crooks has it the hardest.

I think out of the three, Curley’s wife has it the least worst, and the way she acts and the things she says makes me lose some sympathy for

her though. Its sad though for her case because her husband neglects\ and barely pays any attention to her, is always out and she’s always wondering where he is at, and this causes her to seek attention from other guys, and sometimes goes off and uses derogatory words towards everyone when she doesn’t get her way, as we can see on page 78 when she says “...a n***** an’ a dum-dum and a lousey ol’ sheep”, & I think that maybe if her husband showed her more love and attention, she might be a little different.

Another person that deserves our sympathy is Lennie. He deserves our sympathy because he has something in him that makes him kind of slow sometimes and seems super innocent, George says on page 41 “‘course he ain’t mean. But he gets in trouble alla time because he’s so Goddamn dumb”, and i’m pretty sure that Lennie was standing right there when he said it, so you can see from just this example that he ain’t treated that well. Another example is when Lennie said "If you don' want me I can g off in the hills an' find a cave. I can go away any time.", this shows that George is always telling him he doesn’t need him around and doesn’t really want him. Another place that Steinbeck creates sympathy for how clueless Lennie is, causing him to get in trouble is also on page 41 where George is tellin everybody why the got kicked out of Weed and he says “So Lennie reaches out to feel this red dress an’ the girl lets out a squawk, and that gets Lennie all mixed up“ so you can see here that Lennie is very not with the program and needs some extra help along the way, and that’s another reason that people should not really pity him, but give him some extra time to see things, and extra chances.

The last person, and the person who deserves our most sympathy in my opinion is Crooks, and that’s because he is constantly suffering, whether it’s physical pain caused by his job or mental pain from being treated horribly and being super lonely just because he is a different color than everyone else there.

Crooks is the stable buck, and once when he was doing his job he got kicked in the back by a horse & has been living with chronic pain since then. Also when Lennie comes into his room they have a conversation on page 17 and Lennie asked, "Why ain't you wanted?", so Crooks says "'Cause I'm black. They play cards in there, but I can't play because I'm black. They say I stink, Well, I tell you, you all of you stink to me.”, and I am guessing Crooks isn’t saying it happily, so it really shows how he is treated around camp.

Sympathy is something we see everywhere and helps create feeling inside of us. Also if it’s done correctly, we can emotionally connect with what we are either seeing, reading, or hearing. In Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck did a good job writing and it helped us to connect to the characters, especially Curly’s wife, Lennie, and

Crooks.