Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Miscellaneous Of Mice and Men Character Review Of Mice and Men Character Review Of Mice and Men is a novel set on a ranch in the Salinas Valley in California during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The title of the book is a reference to Robert Burns's poem To a Mouse. (1759 - 96): The best laid schemes o' mice and men And leave us nought but grief and pain In the book, Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck created memorable characters that play out two dramatically realistic, neonaturalist themes: Friendship and Loneliness. “Ending the glitter and excess of the Jazz Age, the catastrophe of the 1929 stock-market crash ushered in the "angry decade" of the 1930s. Many novels of neonaturalism and social protest were written, inspired by the rigors of the Great Depression (World Almanac, n.pg.)” Loneliness is a common trait, shared among all of the main characters of the story. Each seemed to exist alone and without a purpose, except for George Milton and Lennie Small. The characters are so vivid and impressive, that the setting and scene change rarely. The detail given to the main characters creates a history: a peek into each of their lives. But the lives that the characters lead are not so appealing. There was often negative criticism toward the characters, calling them barbaric and subhuman. Critic Mark Van Doren wrote, “All but one of the persons in Mr. Steinbeck’s extremely brief novel [Of Mice and Men] are subhuman … Two of them are evil, one of them is dangerous without meaning to be, and all of them are ignorant…(Van Doren, 275).” Although this could be true of the characters, it is clear that their dreams and shortcomings, as well as the hardships of life during the Great Depression drive them to these points of subhuman madness. This could be true of every individual who has ever experienced repeated tragedy; there is always motivation towards that madness. In this case, loneliness is the biggest tragedy. Crooks is the stable buck. He is different from the rest because he is black, in a time where racial prejudice is strong. He has also been crippled, and so his life is very bad. He lives separately to the others in his own room, the harness room. He has books on his shelves, which shows that he is more intellectual than the others. He has fond memories of his past, when he and his white friends would play on their chicken ranch, and were oblivious as to why their parents didn’t like it. Now he knows why, and he hates the fact that he can’t come into the bunkhouse to play cards, but has to spend all his free time by himself. The white people exclude him, so instead of pleading with them he decides he is going to exclude them as well. Crooks, on a black man's loneliness: "S'pose you didn't have nobody. S'pose you couldn't go into the bunk house and play rummy 'cause you was black. How'd you like that? S'pose you had to sit out here an' read books. Sure you could play horseshoes till it got dark, but then you got to read books. Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody-to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick" (80) "Loneliness can result from rejection…" (Couns.uiuc.edu/loneline.htm). Others treat Crooks unjust because he is different from others, given that he is black. He treats others with the same disrespect that he is shown. Furthermore, he does not know how to vent his frustration and as a result, lashes out at everyone as a first instinct. Crooks is not allowed to participate in daily events with white people. He is treated unfairly and therefore acts the same way toward white people (the ones who offend him.) "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 stink to me!" (Steinbeck, 75) Candy is an old man who has been at the ranch for some time. He can remember people who have come and gone previously. He doesn’t do much on the ranch, but he can do small odd jobs about the place. He has lost his hand in an accident, which makes him even less useful. The others do not hate him; he just gets left out because he is old. He has a companion, his dog, whose life parallels his. The dog was once a sheepdog, but has aged and now is only kept around because he is liked. The others all agree that the best thing for the dog is to shoot it. Candy fears the same, but when he hears of George and Lennie’s plan to have their own farm, he offers them a considerable amount of money if they will let him come along, to give his life purpose once more. George, on life without Lennie: "Whatever we ain't got, that's what you want. God a'mighty, if I was alone I could live so easy. I could go get a job an' work, an no trouble. No mess at all, and when the end of the month come I could take my fifty bucks and go into town and get whatever I want" (Steinbeck, 11-12). George, on loneliness and Lennie: "I ain't got no people. I seen the guys that go around on the ranches alone. That ain't no good. They don't have no fun. After a long time they get mean. They get wantin' to fight all the time. . . 'Course Lennie's a Goddamn nuisance most of the time, but you get used to goin' around with a guy an' you can't get rid of him" (Steinbeck, 45). The above two quotes from George may paint him as a two-faced monster, but there is a heart in George that few know other than Lennie. The Boss, another character, says it best, "Well, I never seen one guy take so much trouble for another guy. I just like to know what your interest is" (Steinbeck, 25). George gave a promise to Lennie’s Aunt Clara, before she died, to take care of Lennie. This promise may have bound George to Lennie, but it is the friendship and need for companionship that kept that bond strong and firm, even in the final tragic moments of the story. Another quality trait George has is motivation. He has the drive of a one-track mind, focused on achieving his goals. All of the characters share the same dream, the American Dream, of having something for yourself, or “Living off the Fat of the Lan’,” as Lennie often tells George. But the other characters lack the motivation to reach these goals until George and Lennie arrive. George has this motivation, and in turn, the others feed off of it. Therefore, George’s roll goes beyond caretaker of Lennie. George brings promise to the other characters. Lennie gives the story spice and gives the reader something to expect, without knowing the exact specifics of what is to come. There is still surprise in Lennie’s actions although they are expected. “Lennie’s purpose is to carry the familiar element of violence…”( Geismar, 258). The violence in Lennie is, however, innocent. His lack of intelligence creates a certain amount of forgiveness for his actions. Lennie frees George from loneliness, but imprisons him from achieving his goals and living his dreams. But the story is about more than just the dream itself. These characters possess real personality traits known to Steinbeck. Kevin Atell wrote, “But Of Mice and Men is not simply about dreaming in general, for the nature of the dream at the center of this story is specifically related to Steinbeck's critical understanding of a specific aspect of society in his contemporary California. (Attell, n.pg.)” These characters could have come from Steinbeck’s very community. Of the other characters, one thing is commonly shared, and that is the emotion of loneliness. In the end, George, also, learns the awful truth of loneliness. To save Lennie from a lynching, George shoots Lennie in the back of the head. At last, he will have the freedom that he needs to achieve the goals of his dreams, but the sacrifice of his greatest companion becomes the price he has to pay. All are losers, and loneliness and tragedy prevail. Bibliography: Works Cited Attell, Kevin, An overview of Of Mice and Men, in Exploring Novels, Gale, 1998. http://www.galenet.com/servlet/LitRC/hits?c=4&secondary=false&docNum=H1430001446&origSearch=true&u=LRC&u=CA&u=CLC&u=DLB&t=KW&s=2&r=d&o=DocTitle&n=50&l=12&ttlRad=tw&TI=Of+Mice+and+Men&OP=contains&DT=Criticism+OR+Biography+OR+website+list+OR+topic+OR+table+of+contents+OR+chronology+OR+bibliography+OR+definition+OR+work+overview Geismar, Maxwell, “John Steinbeck: Of Wrath of Joy,” Writers in Crisis: The American Novel Between Two Wars (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1942), 257-258 Steinbeck, John, “Of Mice and Men,” Penguin Electronics; ISBN: 1573950009, Software (October 1995) Van Doren, Mark, “Wrong Number,” in The Nation, New York, Vol. 144, No. 10, March 6, 1937 World Almanac, http://newfirstsearch.altip.oclc.org/WebZ/FSFETCH?fetchtype=fullrecord:sessionid=sp03sw15-51163-cezwbcz1- dfpple:entitypagenum=31:0:recno=1:resultset=7:format=FI:next=html/record.html:bad=error/badfetch.html::entitytoprecno=1:entitycurrecno=1:numrecs=1 Word Count: 1420
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