Lennie and George, in comparison, are out of work and desperate for any kind of decent job. They have little money, nowhere to call home, and as the story progresses, less and less chances for happiness. George and Lennie are experiencing the Great Depression first hand, and it is not a good time for them or the nation. Meursault is experiencing a relatively prosperous period, and could make it even more so if he chose to. These juxtapositions point out the differences in the men, as well. It is doubtful Meursault, with his selfish and self-centered ways, could possibly survive the difficulties George and Lennie are experiencing; he simply does not have the personality and constitution for it. He would give up, while George and Lennie are strong enough to keep working and dreaming of the future. In conclusion, these two characters...
What sets them apart is how they react to the world and other people. George is basically a good and decent man who is driven to murder with only decent intentions. Meursault, on the other hand, is a cold and shallow individual, who murders without reason or conscience. He is almost a brutal character, while George is always sympathetic and decent. Although they live during the same time, their experiences are vastly different, and they have very different souls. George has a soul and suffers for it, while Meursault seems to be without a soul, and thus, without a reason for living.
As one writer says, not reading this novel "…deprives individuals and communities of the opportunity to respond to an ethical imperative insisting on virtuous treatment of our fellow human beings" (George, 83). This is a tremendous summation of fundamentally what Steinbeck is trying to achieve with a novel like of Mice and Men, and a notion which sums up most likely Steinbeck's strongest motivation for writing the novel. However, as one
John Steinbeck's novel, Of Mice and Men, the character of Curley's Wife is a tragic figure. Both flaws within her own character and the lack of opportunities and roles for women in the early 1930s in America play a role in her tragic fate. Of Mice and Men tells the story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two illiterate men who travel together looking for work from ranch to ranch
John Steinbeck, why soldiers won't talk. "Why soldiers won't talk:" John Steinbeck's imaginative essay on the psychological impact of war One of the most interesting aspects of John Steinbeck's essay "Why Soldiers Won't Talk" is the way in which he subtly shifts from the first person to the second person in the essay. He begins the essay stating that he himself is not a soldier: "During the years between the last war and
...and then by her unfortunate marriage to Curley, whom... she does not even like." (Attell) All of her attempts to talk to the other characters, disastrous as they potentially might be, can be seen as attempts to make any kind of human contact. The solution for the farmhands in their loneliness is more simple -- they need to learn to reach out and make friends, and commit to each other
John Steinbeck's Morose Preoccupation John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is a somewhat strange, surprising read. The author selects a very unlikely setting, a farm populated predominantly by hired hands, for a tale that is largely predicated on the conception of friendship and its myriad interpretations -- and applications. However, there is a definite undercurrent that some readers might find disturbing that is present in some of the most poignant notions
Mice and Men John Steinbeck's of Mice and Men: Loneliness, friendship, and the American Dream 'Living off of the fat of the land -- together.' From the first chapter of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men onward, there is foreshadowing of the tragedy that will eventually take the life of Lenny, the simple-minded protagonist of the short novel through Steinbeck's underlining the themes of loneliness, friendship, and the inability of the main
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