Of Mice and Men
by John Steinbeck
For what reason, I don't know, but the copy of Of Mice and Men that I have is ridiculously tall and skinny. Perhaps like Mike Teavee, it got shrunk in a TV and then stretched back to normal size.
Of Mice and Men is about these two guys named George and Lennie. George is small, cunning, and kind of the leader of the two, and Lennie is a bigger guy who is very childlike in the ways that he thinks and acts. George spends a lot of his time taking care of Lennie, because he promised he would. They've traveled together for a long time, finding work and saving money in an attempt to fulfill their very old American dream of one day owning their own house and land and living off of it.
When the story starts, they're just arriving at a ranch, where they're going to work. George is extremely cautious all the time, to the point where you can feel something, it's not clear what, is going happen, and throughout the course of the book about a million things will pop into your head about what that something could be.
At the beginning, the imagery used to describe the ranch when they first get there and the people who live on the ranch, and just about every aspect of the place they are at is very realistic. The picture that's put out is so clear that you don't have to work at all to get a bearing of what's going on. It really brilliantly sets up the rest of the story.
The two biggest themes here are loneliness and dreams. All of the men in the book are lonely and they're all dreaming of something better. And I think being lonely and I think dreaming are two things that go hand in hand and are very human things to be.
The end actually shocked me a lot. Even though I felt something was going to happen from the very beginning, I had no idea what or how. And I was surprised. And wow.
It seems like everyone's read or been forced to read this book at some point. That's because it's amazing. You should read it too, if you have avoided it thus far in your life. C'est tout.
When the story starts, they're just arriving at a ranch, where they're going to work. George is extremely cautious all the time, to the point where you can feel something, it's not clear what, is going happen, and throughout the course of the book about a million things will pop into your head about what that something could be.
At the beginning, the imagery used to describe the ranch when they first get there and the people who live on the ranch, and just about every aspect of the place they are at is very realistic. The picture that's put out is so clear that you don't have to work at all to get a bearing of what's going on. It really brilliantly sets up the rest of the story.
The two biggest themes here are loneliness and dreams. All of the men in the book are lonely and they're all dreaming of something better. And I think being lonely and I think dreaming are two things that go hand in hand and are very human things to be.
The end actually shocked me a lot. Even though I felt something was going to happen from the very beginning, I had no idea what or how. And I was surprised. And wow.
It seems like everyone's read or been forced to read this book at some point. That's because it's amazing. You should read it too, if you have avoided it thus far in your life. C'est tout.
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