John Steinbeck wrote a novella called Of Mice and Men that was published during the year 1937 of the Great Depression. The novella is about two best friends named George and Lennie who is sick of not having their own things like a house, a bed, food etc… So they come up with the idea of saving up their money and buying their own home. But things drastically changes when lennie who is cognitively impaired kills Curley’s wife and George the caretaker and best friend of Lennie’s kills him to protect him. In Of Mice and Men Steinbeck uses the characters Curley’s wife, Candy, and Crooks to display no matter how hard you work you WILL NEVER achieve your dreams. First, Steinbeck uses the character Curley’s Wife to prove the failure of the American Dream.
The features of the female experience at the time are the tragic fates of women, being the object of the male gaze, and being cruelly dehumanised by society. Curley’s Wife is a precursor to the infamous “femme fatale”, a testament to the men’s perceptions of her as a temptress, a troublesome wife, and a foil to the ranch. Steinbeck punishes her for verging on the line of flirting with other men and confessing her desires of freedom, financial stability, as well as her enjoyment in doing so while her husband isn’t around, essentially completing his misogynistic characterisation of Curley’s
Of Mice and Men In Comparison To The 1930s John Steinbeck’s life influenced the context in his novel Of Mice and Men. In fact, he was knowledgeable towards the issues of women’s rights and mental disabilities, and even worked on a ranch as a migrant worker himself. Likewise, these same ideas and actions took place during the Great Depression and are vividly displayed within the characters and the plot of Steinbeck’s book. Women’s rights, mental disabilities, as well as ranch work during this time period are depicted through Curley’s wife, Lennie, and the setting of the ranch.
“The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.” - Alice Walker In Chapter 4 of Of Mice and Men race and gender are depicted in different ways symbolizing different character behaviors.
Obtaining the American Dream has been a challenge for the common person for decades, however several people have faced obstacles including numerous people in Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men ; however, it describes and details the distress, and losses George, Lennie, Crooks and Curley's wife faces. Each figure struggles to achieve the American Dream, those struggles concluding racism, social inequality, disabilities, and gender gap. During the aftermath of Lennie’s actions, shortly their wild dreams dissolve. George and Lennie envision their American Dream
‘How does Steinbeck’s use of setting and characterisation contributed to an understanding of the main themes of the novel?’. The novella “Of Mice and Men”, written by John Steinbeck, focuses on men and their relationships with each other, with the lone female, the wife of the antagonist, being subjected, marginalized and objectified. Set during The Great Depression, the story takes place on a ranch in California with a group of men and one woman. Steinbeck uses techniques
The novella, Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck took place in Salinas, California and was set during The Great Depression. It tells the story of two fictional men, George and Lennie, two migrant workers who have to work in order to get a living. During the book the author Steinbeck shows the importance of having a companion or having a good relationship with someone. In addition, he explores themes such as loneliness, aspirations, dreams through George and Lennie’s relationships.
“She’s gonna make a mess, they’s gonna be a bad mess about her. She’s a jailbait all set on the trigger”. Of Mice and Men show’s George and Lennie’s path to their American dream. They are starting off as laborers in California in the Salina’s Valley and live in a hand-to-mouth lifestyle on a ranch. The novel portrays many male characters than female.
In such time of the Great Depression and gender equality, this novel presents the character of sexism, Curley’s wife, to show how her dreams has been achieved through death. During her talk with Lennie, she tells him that she “‘[...]never get[s] to talk to nobody [and that she] get[s] awfully lonely’” (Steinbeck 86). Even though she is depicted as a flirtatious, “‘[...]purty [...] bitch’”, her true life was lonely and segregated from the male ranchers (Steinbeck 32). Steinbeck applies this paradox in the story to picture the reader about how a character’s identity can either encourage or ruin his or her reasons to live and achieve a future.
John Steinbeck’s novel, Of Mice and Men, takes place in California on a ranch in the Salinas Valley during the Great Depression. During this time, the United States of America was in a period of economic decline and people were living in poverty. From these hardships, weaknesses arise in different characters in the novel. In his novel, Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck utilizes the deaths of Candy’s dog, Curley’s wife, and Lennie to reveal that weaker people are eradicated because they cannot defend themselves against others.
John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men takes place during the Great Depression in the 1930’s. Taking place in Northern California, and in this time period, gives the reader a different perspective and a hint of what life is like back then, and the misery’s and hardships of what people went through. Many themes are expressed in the book, the main one loneliness, which is Steinbeck’s focus. Most people desire contact with others to give life meaning. This is seen when Lennie goes into Crook's room to find someone to talk with, and later Curley's wife comes for the same reason.
World of Sexism Due to the Great Depression, women’s rights took a back seat to employment and poverty. It was believed that women shouldn’t work but stay at home, clean, cook, and raise their children. The prejudice against women in the society was great back in the 1930s for they were degraded and underestimated. All the rights they had gained in the 1920s were neglected and the women were once again maltreated. In Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, the victim of sexism is Curley’s wife who is so insignifact that even a name was not provided for her.
Within the 1937 Depression-Era novel, Of Mice and Men, scribed by John Steinbeck, he implements complex, multi-dimensional characters in which they mutually possess an American Dream, yet they are distinctive in their most aesthetic, indigenous form. Characters including Curley’s Wife, Crooks, and George Milton have always theorized their life in Utopian lifestyles, in the setting of America, but is oppressed by external and internal means that is explored throughout the literature. Notably, George, the co-protagonist, has such ambition to live in a domesticated household in contradiction to the vagrancy he experience, while carrying the weight of having a fraternal-paternal relationship with Lennie, a man approximately his age with an evident disability. His
but she also has to deal with only being known as a possession to her husband and to the others. “Curleys wife” (Pg 79) represents how they do not respect her enough to call her by her own name showing how much she lacks an identity of her own and is treated as a piece of property to her husband making it hard for her to do what she wants without being critiqued by the men on the farm. Another way Steinbeck objectifys Curley 's wife is by using specific vocabulary “Don’t you even take a look at that bitch. I don 't care what she says and what she does.
Curley’s Wife: The Struggle of Getting Out From Her Cage Throughout literature, women who are characterized as shameless temptresses are often the way they are because of a desperation to break away from society’s oppression of low-class, uneducated females. This is never more true than for Curley’s wife in the fictional novella Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. Through considerate yet concise descriptions of her fantasy of Hollywood stardom, putting down of others, and attention-seeking ways, Curley’s wife is revealed to be a downtrodden female who suffers from her own internal, emotional conflict. Curley’s wife muses about her Hollywood ideal as a reassurance that she is a woman of worth and potential.
