Of_Mice_and_Men_-_Gcse

Introduction The book ‘Of Mice And Men’ is a story of two friends looking for work. It was written in 1987 by John Steinbeck, at a time when America was going through a recession. A few years before, in 1929, the American stock market crashed and caused a severe economic depression that lasted for over a decade and became known as the "Great Depression." The main characters George and Lennie have travelled to Salinas Village to start work in a ranch. There they met several other men who had left their friends and family to work as ranch work was the only option available to them. Because work was not guaranteed or regulated as it is now, men could easily lose their jobs and had to try in different ranches which made it hard for them to form relationships or keep friendships. Paragraph 2 George and Lennie travelled to Solidad looking for work, they had to leave there old job due to an incident involving Lennie and while trying to get to the new ranch they talked about getting their own place and having a farm with lots of rabbits. Lennie is mentally impaired and George looks after him; they feel special because they have each other to look after while other ranch workers are all alone. George says: “Guy’s like us that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place." but then he adds: "with us It ain’t like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us." They go and see the boss and he is surprised about their friendship and he comments "well, I never seen one guy take so much trouble over another guy, I just like to learn what your interest is." Paragraph 3 The first person Lennie and George met was Candy. Candy is lonely because no-one wants to talk to him and he never does anything with the other men because he only has one hand but he tries to do a lot of stuff around the farm with one hand. Candy has no friends on the ranch because in his experience men on ranches come and go without forming relationships " A guy on a ranch don't never listen nor he don’t ast no questions." Candy's only friend was his sheep dog, a "drag-footed sheep dog, grey of muzzle, and with pale, blind old eyes." that followed him everywhere. One day Carlson (a worker on the ranch) said Candy's dog stank and that he shouldn't be in the bunk house. Candy didn't notice because he had had the dog for so long. Carlson said to Candy that he thought he should shoot the old dog as he was in pain. Candy was so upset that he wouldn't do it because he loved the dog. Slim told Candy that he could have one of his pups. He wasn't being kind to the dog keeping it alive in that condition. So Candy agreed for Carlson to shoot it but Candy was very upset that his dig had gone after having it for a long time. Candy heard George tell Lennie about the place he wanted to buy and asked about it, he tried to convince George to let him buy it with them by offering all his money, and the compensation he got for losing his hand on the ranch. When George agreed, Candy got excited and started believing that there might be a place for him after all. "They’ll can me purty soon. Jus' as soon as I can't swamp out no bunk house they put me on the county. Maybe if I give you guys my money, you'll let me hoe in the garden even after I ain’t no good at it . An' I'll wash dishes an' little chicken stuff like that, but I'll be on our own place, an' I'll be let to work on our own place." Paragraph 4 Crooks is an old black man who has a crippled back. Crooks is the stable buck and he is treated a lot different to all the other men on the ranch, and none of the white men go anywhere near Crooks. He is not allowed in the bunk house, so he has his own room, where the other men are not welcomed. "You got no rights comin' in a coloured man’s room". Racism was very common near this time in America because there were a lot of black men and most of the white men didn't like black people. Crooks’ father didn't like him playing with white children because his father knew that they would be racist when they grew up. No one got along with Crooks, they all use to treat him really badly they use to call him a nigger and always use to be mean to him. Candy commented that the boss "Give the stable buck hell"; he justified it by saying "Ya see the stable buck's a nigger ". Because Crooks didn't have any friends he spent all his free time reading books. When Lennie went into his room he tried to chase him out but then enjoyed talking to him. He tried to make Lennie understand his loneliness by asking what he would do if George never came back and when Lennie got angry and upset he explained: "Maybe you can see now. You got George. You know he's goin' to come back. 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". He added "A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody". Paragraph 5 Curley's wife is the only woman on the ranch; she is a young attractive woman who likes to wear sexy clothes and a lot of make-up. When George and Lennie first met her "She had full, rouged lips and wide- spaced eyes, heavily made up. Her finger- nails were red". She has no friends and no one to talk to so she tries to get attention from the men on the ranch. At the time in America women did not have many rights and they were treated as possessions so the men on the ranch did not want to be seen talking to her because she belonged to Curley and they didn't want to get into trouble. She wasn't happy in her marriage and she doesn't like her husband "I don't like Curley. He ain’t a nice fella." She doesn't even like talking to him because all he talks about is fighting and what he wants to do to men that he doesn't like. She walks around the ranch and the fields where men are working and tries to talk to them with the excuse of asking if Curley is there. When she tried to talk to Lennie he said that George had told him not to have anything to do with her as she will get them into trouble so she asks "Why can't I talk to you' I never get to talk to nobody. I get awful lonely" and then goes on to say "I get lonely”, “You can talk to people, but I can't talk to nobody but Curley. Else he gets mad. How'd you like not to talk to nobody'" She regrets not following her dream of being an actress and marrying Curley instead. Conclusion From the characters that I have described we can see that the people in the book 'Of Mice and Men' are lonely. Because of the 'Great Depression' life in the 1939's was very hard and money was scarce so people had to travel to find work and earning their wages was their top priority. For that reason most workers were lonely and had no relationships. The cultural and social attitudes of that time also contributed to women and black people feeling isolated and lonely.