The Contribution of Of Mice and Men To American Literature

John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is considered a must-read, yet it is also a banned book. Published in 1937, the novel tells the story of George Milton and Lennie Small, their dream of having their own farm and the journey they take to make the dream true. The novel reflects the struggle of the working class to survive in the 1930s. During that time, the Great Depression was devouring the United States economy; unemployment soared alarmingly to more than 15 million (McElvaine 2008).

The contribution of the novel to American literature is its subtle way of commenting on the realities of society, issues that are considered taboo. It presents the struggle of the working class towards a better life and the magnetic power of the American dream. The novel shows the inconvenient truth that sometimes, even the best laid plans fail due to circumstances that are beyond man’s control.

Also, it touches the issue of racism—how blacks were considered as dregs of society. Feminism is also touched in the novel.

The Struggle for Survival  

The struggle for survival is shown in the efforts of George Milton and Lennie Small in finding a job. What kept them going—something that urged them to work hard—is their vision of a free life: having their own farm and home, where they enjoy all the fruits of their labor. This vision of an ideal world is what the other workers in the ranch hold on to.

The workers in the ranch dream of a family, which they make real through the bond they establish among themselves. They look out for each other and are happy to know that someone has their back. This kind of idyllic life is what George believes in as he continues to tell and retell to Lennie the story of how they will live their lives on the farm.

This vision of the pleasant life, however, is crushed when George realizes that the world is a battleground for the weak and the strong; that the strong prey on the weak. It is revealed in one conversation with Slim that George abused Lennie for fun. George learned the truth that it is wrong to take advantage of the weak. He made it his mission to protect Lennie who, even with great strength, is very vulnerable. Lennie’s vulnerability is shown when Curley attacks him and he refuses to fight back even if he is already wounded.

This shows that the American dream—idyllic life—has a very strong magnet among the people. The story proves this when Candy offers to give his savings to George—so that they could get the farmhouse—as long as George would let him come with them.

The victory of strength over weakness is also shown in Lennie’s character. He kills everything he has in his hands—rabbits, puppies and even Curley’s wife. He loves to pet soft things. His petting is too strong for the animal (or woman), but he also fails to recognize that his strength is killing the one he is petting. He does not know when to stop petting. When Curley’s wife screamed at him to stop, Lennie panicked and accidentally broke the woman’s bone. In a way, Lennie’s greatest strength is also his weakness.

Curley, the boss’s son, is a small man. He compensates his size by bullying bigger guys who are weak-willed, like Lennie. Skilled with his fists, he uses larger men as a punching bag. He also considers other men as threats, especially when they are looking at his wife.

As the boss’s son, Curley thinks he has the right to do whatever he wants to the workers. He treats the workers as inferiors who should be thankful of having a job at the ranch, therefore should not complain if they are being abused.

In this manner, Curley gains power. 

Aside from surviving physically, another form of struggle is shown: the struggle of acceptance. This is shown by both Crooks and Curley’s wife.

Racism and How Blacks Survive

Crooks is the black worker at the ranch, separated from the rest because of his skin color. He bullies Lennie, telling him that George has left the ranch for good. Lennie doesn’t believe what Crooks says—and counters that he knows George enough to be assured his friend will return—but Crooks pushes it and insists George is really gone. By preying on Lennie’s weakness, he gains power and respect for himself, knowing that he is superior to someone else. He clearly relishes this moment. He works in a racist ranch; most of the time he is treated as a nobody because he is black. He compensates his isolation by being arrogant and imposing a “no Whites allowed” rule in his room.

Feminism

Curley’s wife gains power when she successfully controls Crooks, by telling him to mind his manners or he could get fired. She uses her status as the boss’s daughter-in-law to have power. Like Crooks, Curley’s wife loves this moment. The portrayal of women as threats in the novel is parallel to the nature of the sirens in the Greek epic Odyssey. The sirens sing a song that lure sailors to their doom.

 All the time, the workers consider Curley’s wife as a threat to their jobs. She flirts with them; the men fear losing their jobs whenever she is near them, since Curley is a jealous husband.

Mercy Killing

Another issue tackled in the novel is mercy killing. It is first shown by Carlson shooting Candy’s old dog because the animal is useless and it stinks. Though Candy refuses at first to let the dog be killed, he gives in anyway after Slim talks him into it. Carlson then shoots the old dog.

This event foreshadows Lennie’s fate. George knew that Curley would make death painful for Lennie. George’s decision to kill Lennie himself was reinforced by Candy’s regret that he hadn’t shot the dog himself. George then decides to give his friend a quick and painless death, rather than turn him over to Curley for a slow and painful end. This way, he was sure that his friend had indeed died painlessly, and he didn’t have the pain of regrets that Candy had with his dog dying in someone else’s hand.

Animal Imagery

Animal imagery is one contribution of the novel. Lennie’s characteristics are described through the use of animals: his strength compared to a bull, his hands to paws, and his size to a horse.

The comparison shows that even humans sometimes behave like animals. The behavior could be “in a good way,” like the strength. (But it could also mean that the attitude is close to savagery, depending on the animal used as point of comparison). 

Conclusion

The novel’s Marxist ideas are shown clearly in the characters and events. These are not made up, but the reality that society has. One contribution of Of Mice and Men is that it did not comment directly on the issues of society. John Steinbeck put forth his comment subtly by painting a picture of what is happening. The subtle manner of commentary is the absence of it. Steinbeck hasn’t uttered a single comment. He left the reader to decide for himself. However, the truths are well-established and the comment is put into the mind of the reader.

Three Weeks With Percy Jackson

It was at last a free weekend. No library research. No papers. No homework. School is in the closet for three days, and I can do whatever I want. I rejoice at this thought. Most weekends—for my classmates and I—are no different from school days. There is always a big job to do. And it goes without saying that nights are sleepless and coffee keeps us going.

“I deserve a little party,” I told myself. Perhaps I could watch the upcoming film this Saturday, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. But then I remembered that weekends meant crowds would swarm into the mall, and probably I would have to endure long lines. Waiting is one thing I hated. Instead, I spent Saturday morning—dawn actually—on the internet downloading Percy Jackson ebooks. Why dawn? The wifi signal is strongest at this time of day.

I immediately opened The Sea of Monsters,the first one to be downloaded. The first page got me hooked instantly. The story was an edge-of-your-seat action in a rib-cracking comedy. That’s not all. I felt like I was in the action, not just an observer from a high tower. The first-person point of view pulls me from my room into Camp Half-Blood itself, and I join Percy and Annabeth and Grover in the quest. I felt sad about Chiron, as Percy and Annabeth were, too. I don’t know much about this Chiron character, but the power of Percy’s narration caused me to grieve over Chiron’s dismissal as Activities Director.

How the narration caused me to feel how the characters felt, I don’t know. Perhaps it was the POV. Or the language. The language used was the language of my time, my generation. Percy described things the way any teen would. He used stuff, thing, this guy, huge…you get the idea. Not the poetic type of description you’d find in Harry Potter. I mean, look at how one place is described in HP and compare it with Percy Jackson. Harry Potter novels sound like this:

The river’s brackish waters flowed quietly, plastic wrappers and bottles going   

 along with the current as though they were not sure where to go. A fox dipped his snout at the edge of the water, hoping to quench its thirst. It cocked its head at the  sound of swishing cloaks, its ears listening intently.

Percy Jackson doesn’t sound like that. The book would be more like this:

The river has mucky waters, and lots of stuff flowed with it—plastic bottles and wrappers. Then there’s this fox that drank at the edge. It cocked its hd when it  heard cloaks swishing. It listened attentively. 

I am a Literature major, sure, and am trained to appreciate the beauty of adjectives and stuff like that, but hey, I’m a typical teen who is drawn to the language of her time.

Going back to The Sea of Monsters, I couldn’t wait to know what happened after Percy and Clarisse joined forces and the next and the next. The action kept me glued to the story. Then when it ended, I was happy and excited to begin another book.

I read The Lightning Thief next. I was kinda rebooted. I knew Percy’s beginnings—ADHD, dyslexia and all that. Like Book Two, I was glued from page one to the end. I never wanted to leave my computer. I concentrated in class, of course, and I did my homework before anything else. But my longing to continue joining Percy’s quest made me wake up at four-thirty in the morning so I could read (evenings are for school work and I call lights out at ten). I read the novel until eight o’clock, when I’d close my laptop and walk to school for my 8:30 class.

The same excitement prevailed while reading Book Three, The Titan’s Curse. The adrenaline rush I felt was leveling up, since the story was getting action-packed than ever. It hit a different level in Book Four, The Battle of the Labyrinth, where things were kind of hanging. I understood why the story “hung.” The book was preceding The Last Olympian, which would tie up loose ends. Therefore, the author pumped suspense into his readers first before telling the story of Book Five.

The Last Olympian’s schedule of reading, luckily, fell on a Friday. It was another clear weekend. I devoured the book as a hungry predator would do to a prey, and I finished the book—and the series by Saturday evening. I was very excited, reading this book. It was the culminating story of the Percy Jackson series, and the rush that I felt when reading Deathly Hallows came back. I couldn’t describe it here; it is beyond words. I suggest you read the books to know what I mean.

Reading Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series reminded me of Harry Potter in some ways:

1.        Percy Jackson and Harry Potter live in the normal world, where they do things that get them into trouble. Then one day they learn that they’re special, and that another world exists aside from the mortal world they are in.

2.        A prophecy about them is made and the prophecy says that the subject holds the fate of the world in his hands.

3.        The main villain is a powerful evil guy who was once defeated and is rising again.

4.       The hero is trained by a mentor who gets very close with the protagonist.

5.        A spy for the main villain is in the midst of the protagonist’s camp. The villain stands by the protagonist in the end before he dies.

6.        The protagonist has an arch-enemy in the form of his fellow camper/student and they become allies in the end.

7.        The mentor of the main protagonist is chucked from his position due to an alleged crime then is reinstated later.

8.        The training ground of the protagonist is concealed to normal people.

I admit that I am saddened by the fact that The Last Olympian concludes the Percy Jackson series. I have some questions, like, what became of Chiron after that? What about Paul and Sally? And the new prophecy? Being a writer, I know pretty well that the end is the end. I’ve been trained to never write more than what I have to. I must start with a bang and end with a blast. And that’s what Rick Riordan did. 

If anything, reading the Olympian series made me appreciate Greek mythology all the more. I love Greek mythology—I’ve got the Iliadand the Odyssey—and the five Riordan books reinforced the appreciation I have. If I were a kid who says “Who cares” to a boring lecture in Greek history, this series would change the way I look at it.

The way of presenting Greek mythology in a form of a novel is way, way cool. Brilliant, if you ask me. And it makes sense. The power of the West moves: Greece to Rome to England and now the States. What if, indeed, Mount Olympus is in New York? That’s a catchy beginning. Something that’ll really catch your attention. And the ending—the all-is-well type—the way it was presented, it was a bang.

I have only one sentence to say to the author of Percy Jackson and the Olympiansseries: Excellent work, Mr. Riordan!

The Salad Bowl Called Literature

Salad. When someone says salad, different things come to mind: macaroni, Caesar or fruit salad. One thing though, is common: a salad is a mixture of ingredients.

I see literature as a salad bowl. It is a mixture of the writer’s thoughts and experiences combined with images and flowery words. In salad parlance, thoughts and experiences are the macaroni pasta and the fruits; flowery words are the dressings or the cream, which add flavour, so to speak.

I have said that the cream is the imagery and the flowery words. The cream is a requirement for the macaroni salad, is it not? One can’t call a salad a macaroni salad without the cream. Same with literature. There has to be an image use, one that “conceals” the message. After all, that is the beauty of literature. “One Arm,” for instance, uses the arm as a symbol of a woman giving herself to a man.

With respect to form—especially in poetry—I keep an open mind. I do not believe that a poem has to have a fixed rhyme and metre. Putting rhyme and metre on the poem is the writer’s business. If he wants to go traditional, fine by me. If not, so be it. Going back to macaroni salad, it’s like not including corn in the mixture because you do not want to. But the salad is still a salad.

I believe too, that a literary piece has to have something unique. Resil Mojares’ “Ark” for example, teaches the reader to be a keen observant. This is for prose, though. Because after I read a story, I always ask, “Now what?” I look for something new in that story, something that could help a budding writer like myself. It is from Sinai Hamada’s “Tanabata’s Wife” that I learned the events in the story reflect the character’s personality. Or that the dead-end street in James Joyce’s “Araby” is the symbol of innocence.

Literature has its “prescribed” characteristic—imagery. The others—rhyme, metre, once-upon-a-time opening—can be played with or ignored. Some would contest these, and stick to tradition or claim that I am a little old-fashioned. My reply: take a look. Literature is a salad bowl.