Lennie In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

Words: 818
Pages: 4

The wonderful book Of Mice and Men by the sweet writing style of John Steinbeck was an amazing adventure. What brought the story alive were the colorful characters and how they were used to create and show the theme. Of all the characters in this book, the ones that stood out were: Lennie for his view of the world around him and how he was shown and labeled "different" but yet manage to break that label. Crooks was another wonderful bright character, his part was small yet huge in the theme and book, his background with racism shows how hard it was and still is for Crooks because he is a person of color and is physically disabled. Curley's wife is also important, she was the only person the book to have no name which shows how she was treated …show more content…
Lennie is a great example of matter what people's opinion of you they can switch in a matter of seconds. When "Curley's fist was swinging [then] Lennie reached for it [he] still held on to the closed fist" (63). At that moment everyone realized Lennie was the powerful one. Lennie was then labeled as a strong nut job. Lennie may be shown as a nut no but truth is he has a mental disability and being that way he was thought to just be crazy and was way over looked, back then he would have just been throw into the physic ward with everyone else who was like him. Lennie was lucky to not end up there but tragically his fate took him somewhere else. Other characters experienced labels along the lines of bigotry but not nearly as much as Crooks …show more content…
The reason for this is discussed that she is suppose to symbolize that she is someone's property, that someone being Curley. As the only woman on the ranch this can attract unwanted attention from the male gender which takes up about 99.99% of the ranch, but in this case the attention is wanted. Curley's wife is considered "jailbait" since rape is in the victims say. The victims at the time mostly being women. This means in this age they were ahead but still behind. Curley's wife starts to wonder "ain't I got the right to talk to nobody? Whatta they think I am?" (87). Since Curley's wife loves attention, from men specifically, when they label her as a "slut" or a "tart" it really does get to her. At the same time Curley's wife doesn't know or really doesn't pay attention to those labels so she is both knowing but oblivious to these labels ruining her