An Analysis Of Symbols In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

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In John Steinbeck’s novella “Of Mice and Men”, he enacts through his writing, the themes, of Violence and Dreams, Hopes and Plans. John Steinbeck relates back to those themes through Rabbits, Bunkhouse, and Lennie Small. The symbol, setting, and person chosen all represent Dreams, Hopes and Plans and Violence. Rabbits represent Dreams, Hopes and Plans because Lennie was always dreaming of raising the Rabbits. Bunkhouse represents Violence because all of the people who stay there are extremely rowdy and cruel. Finally, Lennie embodies Violence because of his consistency to massacre innocent beings. The Symbol I will be depicting in this story is rabbits. I have chosen rabbits because they represent Dreams, Hopes and Plans. Rabbits represent Dreams, Hopes and Plans because they were what Lennie always looked forward to whenever times got hard. An example of this is, “George, how long’s it gonna be till we get that little place an’ live on …show more content…

Lennie Smalls depicts Dreams, Hopes and Plans, and he represents Violence. Lennie represents Dreams, Hopes and Plans by always looking forward to the Dream House that him and George are going to have, he is always looking forward to the rabbits that he is going to tend later on. This is shown by, “But you ain’t gonna get in no trouble, because if you do, I won’t let you tend the rabbits.” (9) Violence is embodied by Lennie because he does violent things whenever he gets scared. An example of this is, “Well, he seen this girl in a red dress. Dumb bastard like he is, he wants to touch ever’thing he likes. Just wants to feel it. So he reaches out to feel this red dress an’ the girl lets out a squawk, and that gets Lennie all mixed up, and he holds on ‘cause that’s the only thing he can think to do.” (21) This shows that he was scared and just held on to the dress, and the girl thought that Lennie was trying to rape

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