Of Mice And Men Blog

Section IV

I think that Of Mice And Men is a tale like no other. The characters and themes make this book simply wonderful. There's lovable characters like Slim and Lennie, then there's the ones you love to hate like Curley. In less than two-hundred pages, John Steinbeck crafted a great story using these characters and combining them with several different themes. There were main themes like friendship and isolation, and side themes like race. All of this made Of Mice And Men an enjoyable experience.

The visuals of Lennie's strength in the movie had the biggest impact on my understanding of Of Mice And Men. We already knew that Lennie was strong telling from how George talked about him and the fight with Curley. It was easier to see exactly how strong Lennie was in the movie. During the scenes where we saw the ranchers working, Lennie was able to carry one bag of barley by himself. It took two normal men to carry what Lennie could've. Lennie was strong enough to buck barley faster than the others. We even see one of the ranchers tell Slim that he couldn't keep up with Lennie's pace.

During the movie representation of the fight scene with Curley, you can see the exact emotions and strength of both Lennie and Curley. There's Curley's punches to Lennie's head, which will hurt more than normal because Curley practices boxing. Lennie later completely stops Curley's hand and makes it bleed. This visual and the barley bucking scenes change my understanding of certain parts of the novella related to Lennie and Curley.

I would recommend this book to just about anyone. Most people would think that an awesome book with excellent story elements would be a few hundred pages. This is a simple novella. It's short and delivers the same enjoyable experience that another other five-hundred page book can.

Section III

The flashback in the movie consisted of all the events from the Weed incident to George killing Lennie. George was looking back on the past while he was on a cargo train. Changing the end of the story to make the past events a flashback leaves a bigger impact on the audience. The audience is surprised and shocked to see that George was thinking about his last rodeo with Lennie. Viewers feel bad for George because he's running away from Tyler Ranch alone. They see George's expression of sorrow as he looks back at what he did. He's running off to another ranch but without Lennie, George's only true companion.

The feeling you get at the end of the movie definitely does not match the same feeling at the  end of the book. The director probably wanted his viewers to feel heartbroken. By turning the story into one big flashback, people will feel worse than if the original ending was shown. The last line of dialogue at the end of the book is: "Now what the hell do you suppose is eatin' them two guys?" Carlson says this after he and Curley find Slim consoling a depressing George. This last line tells us that Carlson is really inconsiderate of the friends of his coworkers. We already know that he didn't care about whatever Candy had to say before his dog was killed. Not knowing why George and Slim were crestfallen shows us that Carlson probably didn't have many real friends. George and Lennie have a mindset about why their different than other swampers. They know that they have each other to look after but other men don't. Slim also says that not many workers travel with others. Carlson didn't care about Candy's relationship with his dog or George's feelings about Lennie because he himself hasn't had a companion like the ones Candy and George had. He doesn't know how it feels to lose or even have a close friend.

That last line leaves the reader thinking Carlson is either cruel, lonely, or both. What Carlson said can make people think of Carlson as inconsiderate because George killed his best friend. Some might also believe that Carlson isn't rude by heart and just hasn't had a real friend before. It could be a combination of the two. Maybe Carlson is just inconsiderate of others because he's alone and doesn't have real friends. This line left me thinking that Carlson was insensitive but after looking back at the past events of the book, I believe that Carlson had little to no friends in his life.