Of Mice And Men Essay Examples

By Golda Bhebhe. In the novel “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck we are introduced to two main characters, George Milton and Lennie Small. These men are close friends who travel together looking for employment in America in the 1930s. Lennie is quite a simple guy who sometimes gets into trouble. Steinbeck uses a range of writing techniques to portray Lennie and we are left at the end feeling very sad that he has had to die. When we first meet Lennie and George we immediately notice that George is the leader and Lennie is slower and seems to await instructions.

George is described as a small and quick, dark of face, with restless eyes and sharp, strong feature. It also moves on to say that every part of him was defined: small, strong hands, slender arms, a thin and bony nose. The author creates a very masculine attractive imagine of George by making him look put together and neat with very chiselled bone structure which in society has always been considered very handsome.

On the other hand Lennie is described as a huge man, shapeless of face, with large, pale eyes, with wide, sloping shoulders.

This creates a very unattractive look for the character because he seems to be coming of slightly a large untidy man who doesn’t seem to take pride in the way he looks. When the two men first walk into the brush George is leading the way and Lennie is carefully following him. They were walking in single file down the path, and even in the open Lennie stayed behind George.

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This shows that Lennie is very dependent on George in the way that a child would be. The two men soon move into the wider world of the ranch and here we see how other people react to Lennie.

Steinbeck evokes sympathy for Lennie when he shows the way other people react to him. The ranch workers at the start are very inquisitive and some even envious of Lennie & George’s relationship. Some are slightly intimidated by Lennie because he is a big guy but they don’t know that he really a child at heart could never hurt anyone intentionally. One of the workers who are especially intimidated by Lennie is Curley. Curley is the boss’s son. He is a thin young man with brown face, with brown eyes and head of tightly curled hair.

Curley seems to be intimidated by Lennie because of his large size and him being a small man feels the need to look down on him to make himself feel like a “big guy” because he knows Lennie can’t do anything because he is in the position of power. “Curley’s like a lot of little guys. He hates big guys. He’s alla time picking scraps with big guys. Kind of like he’s mad at’em because he aint a big guy. ” This shows that Curley has always been jealous of bigger men. So he finds pleasure in bullying Lennie because usually it’s the other way round.