Of Mice and Men

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Summary: Unrealistic Realism
Review: I thought this novel was an excellent example of regionalistic writing, but is often mistaken for a work of realism. Steinbeck's writing superficially is realistic. A second glance shows idealism. This book is a masterpiece and should be considered carefully.

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Summary: Thie tear-jerker makes us realize what we take for granted
Review: The choices of these characters are very interesting in this straight-forward novel. It helps us to develop more sensitivity to others, and helps one to imagine what it is like to live with an impedimemt.

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Summary: To everyone who wrote a summary I agree with everyone.
Review: I would just like to comment that this was a well written book, and I hope that everyone get a chance to read it.

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Summary: Smiles and tears; dreams and reality; friendship and fate.
Review: Some people might think it boring and tiresome. But after reading this book, I have so many deep feelings toward these lonely men who wandered around and urged for a home to stay and to be sheltered. Each of characters had dreams and see how they ended up in the book. It also describes very vividly about George's and Lennie's ironic friendship which had ended up a tragedy. If you are going to read the book, at the end you will find yourself sighing at the unchangeable fate for these wanderers. I myself like the story very much, and I had savored every details of it. The story made you not only to smile and cry, but also to think and feel. If you have not start this story yet, read it with your heart.

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Summary: Nature's progam for lonliness and tragedy in Of Mice And Men
Review: As we approach the sixtieth anniversary of the first publication of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, and given its enduring popularity as evidenced by the many stage, television, and motion picture productions, it's hardly premature to claim that the novella is an American classic. While teaching this novel over the last seven years, I have rarely found a student who did not find the story compelling, and those who did not, like Steinbeck's Carlson, could not see the novel's pathos. Because the story offers so little hope for the human condition, so little joy in the darkening bunkhouse, the little love and caring and wisdom that we do experience through George, Slim, and Lennie seem incandescently human and attractive in contrast. The greater part of the novel's appeal, George and Lennie's relationship, although far from what one could call a reciprocal friendship, intrigues the reader in the same way many comic duos intrigue. We alternately identify with the much put-upon "smart guy" who helplessly tries to cope with and control his irrational, dumb and, yet, spontaneous, child-like partner as they lurch from one self-inflicted crisis to another. While Steinbeck uses that classic comic routine so that the reader warmly identifies and recognizes the relationship, a closer look at the relationship, however, quickly reveals the novel's darker side, where George willfully dominates and controls Lennie. As we read on, Curley and his wife emerge as foils who mirror the novel's main relationship. Both couples pivot on a power struggle, on a willful monopolization and control by one partner over another. Indeed, all of the relationships and couplings in the novel turn on a power struggle. Pizer and Owens claim that "one of the themes in of Of Mice and Men is that men fear loneliness, that they need someone to be with and to talk to who will offer understanding and companionship" (Owens,146 ). While most critics agree with Pizer and Owen, none have seen or suggested that the loneliness and fear in ! the novel's characters result from the two antithetical urges that the forces of nature have encoded or programed into all its creatures. On the one hand, Steinbeck's Nature demands of its creatures competition and power to wrest the limited goods of the earth. On the other hand, Nature also urges the individual to seek community and intimacy. The novel explores how these two contradictory urges destroy any hope in man for happiness. Man, at war with himself, has been exiled from Eden. Happiness, therefore, must be an illusion because Nature's two primary and fundamental directives are radically antithetical; the satisfaction of one urge immediately excludes the satisfaction of the other. Steinbeck's peculiar understanding of the curse of Cain, as explained by Goldhurst in his seminal study, is to crave companionship from the depths of one's nature, only to destroy it by possessing it. Because the controlled other is always reduced to an object, to a means towards another's end, an equal interpersonal relationship is made impossible or, at best, an anomaly. In addition, the relationship causes an inescapable guilt in the reducer. The reduced other also experiences guilt because of an effaced and degraded self, but also because he cannot ever be controlled as much as the dominator demands. Here is Steinbeck's naturalism. A self-enclosed, non-transcendent, non-teleological natural system that provides a fatalism which when seen through the sympathy of sensitive eyes offers the possibility of pathos and beauty. Steinbeck's metaphyisical naturalism can also reinvent and reinterpret the ancient myths and symbols in the ironic light of a dark and grim metaphysic. Steinbeck's narrator establishes and characterizes George's lording of power and control over Lennie early in the first chapter: George's hand remained outstretched imperiously. Slowly, like a terrier who doesn't want to bring a ball to its master, Lennie approached, drew back, approached again. George snapped his fingers sharply, and at the sound Lennie laid the mouse in his hand (Steinbeck 9, emphasis mine). George precipitates this confrontation almost knowingly when he lies on the grass after ordering Lennie to fetch firewood. Rather than help Lennie, who must make many trips to get enough wood, George sits and whistles. Ineptly, Lennie returns with one twig and, George, knowing Lennie has indulged his passion, omnisciently declares: "Awright...Gimme that mouse." George's emotional misuse of the power he enjoys over Lennie are many and varied; however, the incident where Lennie crushes the hand of Curley reveals the terrible irresponsibility of which George is capable. Although Slim offers to end Curley's vicious assault on Lennie, George stops Slim: "George put out his hand and grabbed Slim". (69) The attack on Lennie could have ended, but George wants revenge on Curley whom he hates: "George yelled again, 'I said get him.'" George knows that Lennie's immense and, once unleashed, uncontrollable strength could easily kill Curley, and yet, he cannot resist the opportunity to demonstrate his power over others through Lennie. Earlier George had warned Candy about the danger of "messing" with Lennie: "George said ominously, 'well, he better watch out for Lennie.'" (30) Only later do we realize that George's warning was really a threat aimed at Curley. George's life and death power over Lennie, however, is not without its drawbacks. In a confession to Slim, George begins to reveal the parameters of the central metaphysical dilemma in which each man twists. George recognizes his urge to dominate, control and rise in the social pecking order when he tells how Lennie's life was almost lost when he ordered Lennie to jump into a lake, even though Lennie couldn't swim: "I used have a hell of a lot of fun with 'im. Made me seem God damn smart along side of him."(44) Lennie's near-death brings George to a sense of his responsibility and guilt, and he wants to "confess" his misuse of power and responsibility. Yet, that insight doesn't release George from the same urge to lord control over Lennie and increase his stature in the eyes of others. After his profound confession to Slim, George still boasts: "He'll do any damn thing I ---". Steinbeck leaves the reader to complete the boast. George has the ability as a reflective man to partially understand the forces that drive him, but he remains powerless to change the forces within himself nor the guilt that follows. As revealing as the confession is about George, it also alludes to the psychological dynamic motivating all of the characters. Slim, the God-like skinner, questions the relationship, and George explains why he travels with Lennie: He fears loneliness and the rage that inevitably accompanies human isolation: " 'I ain't got no people,' George said. "I seen the guys that go around on the ranches alone.That ain't no good. They don't have no fun. After a while they get mean. They get to wantin' to fight all the time." (45) In an earlier scene, when Slim first meets and questions George concerning his companion, Slim cryptically muses as to the reason for mankind's loneliness: Slim looked through George and beyond him. "Ain't many guys travel around together," he mused. "I don't know why. Maybe ever'body in the whole damn world is scared of each other." (38) Fear- of- the-other, therefore, becomes the central existential dread that causes loneliness and negatively shapes and motivates the interior life of man. That fear-of-the-other arises from what the novel indicates as the inexorable urge to control the other. The nature of the phenomenon, however, lacks complex, multi-facted cause and effect components. If that were so we might interrupt a causal series and change human nature; rather,Steinbeck's naturalism suggests a simple, seamless, inter-dynamic manifold that molds and determines behavior,

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Summary: Real Exuberant Book!1
Review: The ending is very sad, and it touched me deeply!!! I'm only 13 and have read six Stienbeck's novels, in which I have been moved deeply.

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Summary: A Touching Tale On Man's Tragic Fate.
Review: A story of two men contrasting in physical & mental conditions but united in a deep & trusting bond whose dreams are shattered by life's sinister twist;is handled very well by Steinbeck's gifted touch for the realistic.His lyrical catch-scapes prove daunting & impenetrable though,hindering the flow of the dialogues bet. the characters,where the strength of the novel lies.His style of prose fits more for a screenplay,& it's no wonder that the film of this work was done so well.The end is a dissapointment when one has seen the film;nevertheless,the work is a moving portrayal of human relationships in the inevitability of man's destiny & his helplesness in trying to avert it.

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Summary: great
Review: this is a really good book. it teaches you a lot about human feelings. at first, I didn't know whether or not I would like it, but then the ending just totally blew me away.

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Summary: An experience.
Review: This book was just the bomb. I just can not see how anyone could ever write such a telling, sad, touching, realistic story in just 110 pages. If nothing else, John Steinbeck was a great man of words; he had a true understanding of human nature. To disect this book would be a crime. Just read it and enjoy it for what it's worth.

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Summary: what would have happened after?
Review: Great book! My question- what would have happened after George killed Lenny? My class is doing a mock Trial of a time when they come to get George for murdering Lenny. As his defense attorney, I will show how Lenny's murder was not pre meditated as George was mostly convinced by Slim.