They have recently escaped from a farm near Weed where Leonie was wrongly accused of rape when he touched a woman to feel her soft dress. George acts as a father figure to Leonie who is his best friend and who is also a mentally disTABLE man. George tries to be a good example to Leonie of how a man should be. He teaches Leonie from what he has learned himself through traveling. Lien’s dream is of owning a farm of his own with George. George often regrets the life he could have had as a carefree man, free of the burden of caring for Leonie.
The theme of the book is the possibility of a dream becoming a reality. George and Leonie dream of owning a farm that they can call their own and where Leonie can raise rabbits and stay out of trouble free from society. Both men constantly kept this dream in front of them. Leonie asks George to repeat the dream over and over. George refuses to spend any money he is saving every dime to buy the land. The dream keeps both of the working it keeps them close. Curlers wife and Crooks, two cynics, mocked at the dream of Leonie and George as being unrealistic but Candy sees its possibility and its beauty.
He offers to give his life savings to help make the dream come true he wants to join George and Leonie on the farm, living out his last days in happiness. When the two men accept Candy, he suddenly has a new lease on life the dream has given him hope for a better life. At the end of the book the dream dies. As soon as Candy sees the body of Curlers wife, he understands his own loss of a dream and curses her for it. George also knows the dream has died with Lien’s death, and the book ends with him going off to spend his money on liquor. He no longer has a reason to save his money.
Without a dream, his life is sad and meaningless. The irony in the book is that George kills Leonie because e loves him. He wants to spare Leonie from dying a brutal death at the hands of Curler and the other ranch hands that is furious over the death of Curlers wife. He selflessly does the terrible act himself, as a compassionate act to his friend. George steals Carillon’s pistol to use it is the same pistol that killed Candy’s old dog in order to save it from suffering and misery. Ironically, the ranch hands felt sorrow for Candy over the loss of his dog but they feel no sympathy for George over losing his best friend.
Slim is the only one who realizes the irony of the shooting, and he tries to comfort George. George chooses not to do any of the things he has dreamed about doing, even though he is free to do them the other ranch hands even try to tempt him. But George does not want to spend money that could be saved for the farm. At the end of the book, thanks to Candy’s contribution, the three men are close to realizing their dream of owning a farm but the dream dies with Leonie. George is now a free man, without the burden of caring for someone. He is miserTABLE in his loneliness and misses his friend.
Leonie Small and his friend George Milton are the main characters in Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. Leonie is a mentally disTABLEd man who works as a migrant laborer. His strength makes it easy for him to find work but that same strength combined with his mental restrictions causes’ difficulty and problems for Leonie and George. Lien’s biggest joy is the texture of soft things. He loves to pet mice and puppies so that he can feel their soft fur. He often kills the things he likes best. His slowness and strength make him unTABLE of seeing the harm he is causing until it is too late.
George Milton is total opposite of his friend Leonie. Leonie is a blond giant man with limited understanding George s dark, small, and smart. George is Lien’s self-appointed caretaker. George appoints himself Lien’s caretaker after Leonie nearly drowned because George told him to jump into the water, knowing that Leonie couldn’t swim. By caring for Leonie, George also serves his own emotional well-being. By caring for Leonie, George gives himself a family. During a conversation with Slim, George explains why having people is so important.
While George complains about what a bother it is to look after Leonie he knows that Leonie helps to keep him sane. He is sometimes mean to Leonie he complains about everything he is missing out on by having to travel with him. Candy is the old handyman at the ranch where George and Leonie find jobs. He worries that the boss of the ranch will ask him to leave soon because of his disability to work the ranch with one hand. Candy meets George and Leonie and becomes a part of their dream to buy land and build a farm. Candy is important to George and Leonie because he has the money to buy the land.
This dream helps sidetrack Candy during the novel of the cruel reality of his life. Curler’s Wife is a woman who is living a lonely life on the ranch. She does tot have friends and her husband does not pay her any attention. She searches for attention of the men who work on the ranch, which causes problems between them and her husband. Curler’s wife is described in the novel as a tramp. Her character is well known for seeking out the weaknesses in others. This is why she seeks out Leonie. Crooks is the black sTABLE-hand he gets his name because of his crooked back.
He is the only black man on the ranch and is segregated the others. All Crooks wants to do is to sit and play cards in the bunkhouse with the other men but because Crooks is black e is not allowed into the bunkhouse. The dream farm is symbolic of Leonie and George’s friendship. It is the thing that keeps them together and keeps them working even when times are hard. The Rabbits represent Lien’s dreams and the impossibility of their happiness. George first tells the story of the dream farm. To George the farm symbolizes all sorts of freedom and happiness, but for Leonie it is simply access to soft things.
Leonie was excited about them because they were furry’ and adorTABLE to pet, even though Leonie have a tendency to hurt whatever he pets. The story Of Mice and Men took lace in 1937 during the great depression. The Great Depression began the worst economic crisis in the history of the United States. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs including ranchers. It was during the time when many farmers best hope for a new life was in California. During the Great Depression people needed to travel together to share chores and duties to make a living until something better came along.
That is the way George and Leonie traveled. During the Great Depression money was very scarce. You had to travel around to find a job in order to make money to survive. Leonie and George were in that same situation. Most people worked on farms because stock market crashed people realized that the reason the stock market crashed was because farms were not producing enough goods. Of mice and men was a good story that will make you sad. It will help you to understand what life on the ranch was like for the traveling workers like George and Leonie. I felt sorry for those two helpless men who saw their dreams die.
I felt bad for Ellen but for George too, because he killed his friend and companion in order to save him from a brutal death. The novel had a tragic end to it. The mood at the end is definitely one of depression and frustration. I believe that this was a reflection of Steinbeck thoughts on the subject of the ‘American Dream’ and the false promises of the American Dream at that time. John Ernst Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California. He was the third of four children, and the only son born to John Ernst Sir. And Olive Hamilton Steinbeck.
His family was solidly middle class, he had to earn his own money during high school. He worked on nearby ranches during the summer and he also delivered newspapers on his bike. He explored Saline’s Mexican neighborhood and Chinatown. He worked his way through college at Stanford University but never graduated. John’s father quickly recognized he was talented and eventually both parents encouraged John in his dream to become a writer. During the summers and other times he was away from college, Steinbeck worked as a farm laborer, sometimes living with migrants in the farm’s bunkhouse.
After leaving school for good in 1925, John took a job on a freighter and went to New York City where he tried for a few years to establish himself as a free-lance writer, but he failed and returned to California. John Steinbeck awards and achievements for his novels and short stories held him a place among the countless American writers of the 20th century. John Steinbeck first novel “Cup of Gold” was published in 1929, and was followed by “The Pastures of Heaven” and in 1 933 “To a God Unknown”. His first three novels were unsuccessful both.
After publishing some novels and short stories John first became generally known for “Tortilla Flat” minion it was a series of amusing stories about Monterey Passions. He started more serious fiction novels. Some of his best-known works of fiction, including The Grapes of Wrath (1937) and Of Mice and Men (1937), are set in central California where he grew up. He used his boyhood memories of these places in his stories and novels. In 1 937, Of Mice and Men became an instant best-seller, and John became a respected writer.
He changed the novel into a play, which won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1937. After the success of The Grapes of Wrath, John went to Mexico to collect marine life with the freelance biologist Edward F. Rickets- The two men team up on “Sea of Cortez” in 1941 , a study of the fauna of the Gulf of California. During World War II he wrote some effective pieces of government propaganda, among them “The Moon Is Down” in 1 942, a novel about Norwegian under the Nazis. After World War Two ended he changed the style of his writing a little.
While still containing the elements of social criticism that marked his earlier work, the three novels Steinbeck published directly following the war, “Cannery Row” (1945), “The Pearl”, and “The Bus” both 1 947 was more romantic and calm. In 1948, he became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a famous and exclusive organization dad up of artists, composers, writers and architects. In 1 952 he published the highly controversial novel called “East of Eden”, the novel he called “the big one,” was set in the California Salinas Valley.
Steinbeck reputation is dependent primarily on the naturalistic, themed novels that he wrote during the Depression. John Steinbeck received critical approval in 1 961 for his motivated novel “The Winter of Our Discontent”. Steinbeck received the Nobel prize for literature in 1962. John received the title Of Honorary Consultant in American Literature to the Library of Congress in 1963. In 1 964 was a significant year for John he received the United States Medal of Freedom, the Annual Paperback of the Year award and the Press Medal of Freedom.
Steinbeck also kept journals of his observation and travels, often publishing notes that did not make it into his novels. He died in New York City in 1968. “The Grapes of Wrath” and “Of Mice and Men both have some similarities. Both of these books were written in the late 1 9305. Both stories have a connection to the Great Depression and the context is set in California. In “The Grapes of Wrath” the loads family was kicked off their Oklahoma farm ND forced to move to California to look for work.
The Goads family had to leave their homes to look for work during the depression. They are both about migrant farming laborers who migrate to California in search of a better life during the Great Depression. They both deal with people who, through situations beyond their control, have been forced to go on the road in search of work just to survive. The main characters in both novels are both poor and homeless but not hopeless. They hope that someday they will again be TABLE to settle down and be safe again in their own home or something they can call their own.
