Of Mice and Men

From his first paragraph, John Steinbeck sets the scene in Of Mice and Men through his use of imagery as he describes the natural world as a parallel to later events in the novel. From the sentence describing "the Salinas River" dropping "in close to the hillside bank and" running "deep and green", a few words stick out to me. "close" reminds me of being close to someone (as in a relationship). "River" sounds similar to a nourisher or life giver. Parallels to the story from this sentence would be that Lennie (hillside bank) and George (the River) are close and George provides for Lennie (ex. food). The "slopes" that "curve up to the strong and rocky Gabilan mountains" partly describes George and Lennie's relationship to one another. "curve up" sounds as though the mountains and the river are related to or close to one another (relationship). The mountains being described as strong and rocky are similar to something coarse and mighty. The parallel to the story could be that Lennie (mountains) and George (the slopes of the river) are close to one another and Lennie is very strong. One of the more interesting descriptive sentences about leaves "under the trees" lying "deep and so crisp" describes how protective each is to the other. The word under may refer to protecting or covering. The crisp leaves may be something unhurt and unmolested by trampling feet. To the story, Lennie (tree) and George (the leaves) or vice versa each protect each other and watch out for one another so no harm will come to the other. Even though there may not seem to be parallels to the story in the first paragraph, upon reading the book many parallels can be seen throughout the story.

The second part of this analysis involves quotes from the story and interpretations of the tone. The first tone word I came up with was unfortunate. George still stared morosely at the fire. "When I think of the swell time I could have without you, I go nuts. I never get no peace." "Well, we ain't got any," George exploded. "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... These quotes show how unfortunate George may be because he has to look after Lennie. George expresses how much more fortunate he would be if he didn't have to look after Lennie all the time. The second tone word I came up with was the word dire. The hand shook violently, but his face set and his hand steadied. He pulled the trigger. The crash of the shot rolled up the hills and rolled down again. Lennie jarred, and then settled slowly forward to the sand, and he lay without quivering. "Well, that girl rabbits in an' tells the law she been raped. The guys in Weed start a party out to lynch Lennie. So we sit in a irrigation ditch under water all the rest of that day. Got on'y our head sticking out from the side of the ditch. An' that night we scrammed outta there." These quotes show how dire George and Lennie's situation was at times, mainly caused by Lennie's mistakes. The drastic measures George and Lennie took to avoid these consequences and what reactions these situations called for show how dire their situation was.

Although being your brother's keeper is not always easy, one must remember that your brother will keep whomever keeps him as well. "So we sit in a irrigation ditch under water all the rest of that day. Got on'y our head sticking out from the side of the ditch. An' that night we scrammed outta there." This quote shows how dire George and Lennie's situation was and what measures they took by sitting "in a irrigation ditch under water all the rest of that day." Carlson was not to be put off. "Look, Candy. This ol' dog jus' suffers hisself all the time. If you was to take him out and shoot him right in the back of the head-" he leaned over and pointed, "-right there, why he'd never know what hit him." This quote, while foreshadowing, illustrates that the people during this time would do what had to be done by shooting "him right in the back of the head". A show of mercy is also realized in this quote when Carlson says, "why he'd never know what hit him." Recently, I have had an instance of watching out for someone, and then having the favor returned. A couple weeks ago, I found a class ring that belonged to someone I knew from the band. I returned his ring and he replied by saying that he "owed me one". While taking a quiz in Chemistry class later that week, I came upon a question that I just couldn't remember. Part of the question had to do with "the partial pressure of a gas on the surface of a liquid". I wracked my brain to remember what the answer was, but I just could not remember. Mr. Russell, our Chemistry teacher, gave my class a hint by saying that "there's an eleventh grader with this same exact last name". After he had said that, I remembered who I had given the class ring back to and wrote his name down. Because of this exchange of favors and indirect favors, I made a one hundred percent on the quiz and raised my class grade to an eighty-eight percent.

(Direct book quotes are in blue.)