Animal Imagery in Steinbeck's Character Development

The background into a character is one of the most important necessities for understanding a book. John Steinbeck uses certain repetitive imagery whenever describing a character to give readers an insight on their mannerisms and peculiarities. Among the images Steinbeck uses, the dog and the bear are the most important. John Steinbeck develops the persona and character of Lennie, a big, strong farmhand that is small minded,by the animal imagery that he uses to describe him and through this Steinbeck conveys his overall message about farmhands of the time.

Steinbeck creates Lennie’s persona as a strong but not at all bright farm hand with his use of bear imagery. As Lennie walks he is described as: “Dragging his feet a little, the way a bear

The farmhands were obviously not the most educated so Steinbeck uses Lennie as a hyperbole of how the farm hands lived. They were strong, absent minded and animalistic in the way that they isolated themselves by moving often. The men ‘“go inta town and blow their stake, and the first thing you know they’re poundin’ their tail on some other ranch”’(14). This animalistic style of living is what a lot of the workers did. The workers worked for a month just to have some fun for a single night and then moved on without caring about the future. Steinbeck includes the image of the dog's tail to reinforce that this is an animalistic way of living. Steinbeck tells his overall message through his use of the title Of Mice and Men which comes from the poem To a Mouse. The author Robert Burns writes, “Still thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me! The present only toucheth thee”(To a Mouse). This is the main message that Steinbeck is getting across about the farmhands of the time.That they didn’t care about leaving because they lived in the present just as Lennie does. As slim puts it: “they just come in and get their bunk and work a month, and then quit and go out alone”(39). Steinbeck uses Lennie as a hyperbole of how the working class at the time lived. They would work a bit then move on because like animals, they were antisocial and didn’t care about where the future would take