Blog For Week 5.2.15 - Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

      We have recently started reading the novella Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. We have been introduced to a whole crew of characters, the main ones being George Milton and Lennie Small. George is kind of short tempered with Lennie. They get into fights a lot, mostly because Lennie forgets things very easily and gets them in trouble. Lennie is very childlike. He doesn't even know that is is getting them into trouble. In Chapter 1, it says, "Jus' wanted to feel that girl's dress--just wanted to pet it like it was a mouse--- Well, how the hell did she know you jus' wanted to feel her dress? She jerks back and you hold on like it was a mouse. She yells and we got to hide in a irrigation ditch all day with guys lookin' for us..." George gets very irritated with Lennie, but Lennie doesn't know what he is doing wrong. He just likes the texture of things. Mice, especially mice. He starts petting a little girl's dress because he likes the texture of it and she starts screaming. Who wouldn't if a large strange, full grown man comes up and starts petting your dress? They get kicked out of the work camps because of all of Lennie's little mistakes like that.


      They end up in a new work camp. Lennie, because of George's request, doesn't talk or answer any of the questions because George is worried that The Boss won't give them a job if he sees "how much of a crazy bastard" Lennie is. So George answers all of the questions and The Boss gets suspicious. He thinks that George is trying to steal Lennie's pay. Curley is also kind of suspicious of the two guys because Lennie doesn't talk. Curley is The Boss's son. We learn about him through the swamper named Candy. He says, "...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 he ain't a big guy. You seen little guys like that, ain't you? Always scrappy?" Candy is saying that Curley is always picking fights with bigger guys. I think that he is jealous of the bigger guys because he is not a big guy. We have also been introduced to Slim through direct characterization. “A tall man stood in the doorway. ... He was a jerkline skinner, the prince of the ranch, capable of driving ten, sixteen, even twenty mules with a single line to the leaders. He was capable of killing a fly on a wheeler’s butt with a bullwhip without touching the mule. There was gravity in his manner and a quiet so profound that all talk stopped when he spoke. His authority was so great, that his word was taken on any subject, be it politics or love. This was Slim, the jerkline skinner.” The author wants us to know that this man is powerful. People respect and trust him, so they come to him with their problems. They know that he will give them a good answer and they take his word on everything. They listen to him when he talks and when he tells them to do something, they do it. So, I think that Slim has a lot of power in the camp.

  In Of Mice and Men, Curley's wife does not have a name. She is just referred to as "Curley's wife". For example, "Wait'll you see Curley's wife." The author and the characters don't refer to her by name, they just call her "Curley's Wife". I think that John Steinbeck could've done this because she is not an important enough character to name. Maybe she will not be seen much or talked about much, so it wasn't worth giving her a name. Maybe he though she didn't deserve a name. She flirts with a lot of other guys, basically anyone she sees, so maybe John Steinbeck though she didn't deserve a name.