Thursday, February 7, 2013

Of Mice and Men

Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck
Fiction
107 pages

In the beginning of the novel the author describes this beautiful setting on a river, with a forest on one side, and a beach on the other and different kinds of animals too ranging from deer to raccoons. The author goes on for about half of a page describing this place when suddenly two men come bursting out in suits talking about the next day and their plans. These two men are named George and Lennie. George is medium height, well-built, strong and defined facial features, smart, and according to the author good looking. Walking behind him is his complete physical opposite, Lennie; over-weight, tall, no real shape to his face, not good looking, not that smart and not a lot of potential as a worker other than heavy lifting. These two friends have been run out of towns everywhere because of Lennie's lack of wit.Now they are off to a different job that they are both hoping not to screw up this time. They spend their last night of freedom under the stars next to a dying camp fire. At noon the next day they go to the ranch and find that no one is particularly nice there. Especially a man called Curly, apparently he was an amateur lightweight boxer and never lost. The time was obviously set to a long time ago. I know this because the people who owned the ranch had a colored person working for them, he worked for one of the lowly jobs and was called "Niger" by the ranch owner and some other employees. Also they talked in a southern way in the novel and it reminded me of the wild west. There is a flirtatious but married woman who appears in the novel and she is married to Curly. Where I just left off the two men, George and Lennie were about to have dinner. I will continue this when I read more and when I post next.

1 comment:

  1. The book sounds really exciting! I really liked that you described the characters and that they are exact opposites. Your post was really well written, or maybe it's just that the book is really good, but i hope I will read this book once, it sounds like it is a good story :)

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