The Use Animals to Show the Main Themes in Of Mice and Men

How does Steinbeck use animals to show the main themes in Of Mice and

Men?

This story is about two men (George and Lennie) and their desperate

hope in that they will raise enough money so that they can purchase a

plot of land and “live of the fatta the land”. In this essay I will

discuss how Steinbeck uses animals to show the themes of, friendship/loneliness,

anger/violence, cruelty/kindness and dreams. The main points that I

will be discussing are, how Lennie connects with animals, how

Steinbeck portrays loneliness through animals, how the American dream

fuels and directs the story, how Crooks is treated like an animal and

has animal instincts himself, how killing of animals foreshadows the

story, how Steinbeck uses animals to symbolize or reflect different

emotions the characters are experiencing and the way Lennie is killed

at the end which summarises that Lennie connects with animals in the

most devastating way.

At the beginning of the story Lennie is drinking from the pool as

though he is an animal. “Drank with big long gulps, snorting into the

water like a horse”, this straight away reveals to us that Lennie has

animal instincts. When Lennie and George arrive at the ranch,

immediately Curley begins to show aggression towards Lennie as an

animal would do to protect it’s territory, Curley tries to bait Lennie

into having confrontation with him. This is the same technique people

use to catch animals and that is exactly what Curley is trying to

achieve with Lennie.

An important style of how Steinbeck represents people and themes is

through rabbits and example of this is, at the beginning of the story

Lennie and George are fleeing from their home town. This is shown by

the rabbits as they are flee...

... middle of paper ...

... of control

animal. This is the last time Steinbeck compares Lennie to an animal

and he does it is the most devastating and meaningful way.

Steinbeck is an extremely thoughtful writer as he manages to apply the

animals to show almost all the themes in “Of Mice and Men”. He has a

key character that represents a animal in many ways (Lennie), he has

people that are treated like animals, he shows how the American dream

for ranch people is to have a farm with many animals, he lets the

senses of the animals predict or illustrate and display emotions of

the events that will occur or will have occurred, he makes the animals

show foreshadowing and he shows how the animals were treated at the

time. These are all the main points that I have discussed in this

essay to answer the question “how does Steinbeck use animals to show

the main themes in “Of Mice and Men?”.