John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

A Great Book
Many books in the USA are banned in school curriculums. A couple of those books are currently active on our community. The school board wants to take our some of these books due to lack of meaning or offense to readers. One of these books is Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. This book contains valuable lessons for young readers and should therefore be kept in the school curriculum. However, it does have some negative diction that could offend a young reader. Although, there are many strong qualities of this story and the book being elaborate is one of them. Due to the complexity of the book, it increases comprehension and analytical skills. These skills can help a student in school by giving them the skills to read with more
attention. Also to really think about what they are reading. This is important to the curriculum because it gets students to not only analyze the characters, but to look for motifs and other important attributes to the novel. These skills can really improve someone’s understanding of not just this book, but many others to come. This is due to the examples placed within Of Mice and Men and people will allude back to it when reading other books. Another example would be the maturity level of the book. Due to the maturity of the book, it requires a lot of understanding and thinking. Getting a reader to think about the book further expands his or her knowledge on that book by leading to questions and meaningful class discussions about the novel. Of Mice and Men has many underlying meanings, and in order to find and value them one must have the ability to analyze or even learn to analyze the piece. Finally, the diction in the book is what makes the book what it is. Without comprehension of the words and what they are supposed to mean, it would be hard to understand this book let alone get the themes it’s trying to compose. The complex diction used to describe the characters helps the reader get a more specific picture of the character. This all ties to what the characters are capable of and how they match up to what happens in the story. All in all, this book is important to our curriculum because of its awesome ability to get us to think and analyze all of the elements of writing Steinbeck uses to create this wonderful story.
Nevertheless, this book does have some negative motifs that can give a negative connotation to the book. However, Steinbeck’s use of characterization allows the novel to maintain a great plot throughout the story. The characterization is what makes this story so interesting and basically what it is. First, the diction that Steinbeck uses to describe each and every character is unique. For example, how he describes Lennie as “slow in the head” gives the reader a sense of what Lennie feels and how that affects the story later. Also how Lennie is incredibly strong and is basically the size of two people. When the reader is reading the book, every time a situation comes up, they can look back to how each character is characterized and kind of make an inference on what is about to happen. Second, the way each antagonist and protagonist works together to create the plot. Ultimately, what readers are going to want is an interesting story with great characters. Also the way Steinbeck portrays each of his characters leads to a great plot a wonderful story. This is what as a reader looking for in a book. People don’t want to sit there all day and just read a bad book they have to read but want to be actively engaged in it and enjoy it. Third, the use of imagery ties into the play of his characterization. Steinbeck’s imagery use and descriptions are incredibly and makes a reader feel like they know exactly what the situation looks like. This contributes to how each character acts. For example, when Steinbeck describes Curley as a mean dude who likes to pick on big dudes it gives the reader a hint of what will happen in the future. When they do end up fighting, Lennie is being his shy old self and just takes a beating before later breaking Curley's hand. If we never knew what Curley’s personality was like or why he does what he does, we wouldn’t understand the reasoning in this fight. Finally, how all of the characterizations lead to the themes of the novel. For example, when they describe Crooks as a lonely person contributes to the theme. This is one of the themes of the novel and without proper characterization and relation to the plot; people wouldn’t be able to figure that out as easily. Curley’s wife is also incredibly lonely even though she has a husband. She admits to this when she is talking to George about what she wants or wanted to do with her life. All of the characters contributed to what happened throughout the story specifically by their personality, directly or indirectly. All in all, the characterization contributes to the story so much by giving the story a solid plot and constructing its themes.
Still, the plot of the story is genius.
The plot is made up of what happens in this book and what makes it interesting. First, the way Steinbeck uses the characters to clash together. As the reader knows, one of the main characters in the story is Lennie and an antagonist is Curley. When they first meet the reader wouldn’t necessarily think trouble is going to occur between the two, but later does due to foreshadowing techniques and other hints. The plot of this story is interesting because it is about two poor people who try to make a living on a farm and what happens to them during that time. All of the characters mesh together well and everyone has a role to play weather they are a part of the rising actions, falling actions, or climax of the story. Another example is when Lennie is running away from the people on the farm. This is kind of like a climax of the story and from here on out it goes downhill for Lennie and George. Leading up to this point however, things on the farm were going alright, but there were signs and actions leading up to them being on the run. Like when Lennie gets into a fight with Curley; then when he breaks Curley’s wife’s neck on accident. All of these things play up to what happens in the end. Lastly, the foreshadowing and hints combine to make a phenomenal ending. In the beginning the reader would know George and Lennie as two innocent guys trying to get to their dream farm idea. All of the foreshadowing of death and disruption towards that dream lead to the end of the story. When they were running away from Weed, George is upset with Lennie because he causes them to always be on the run. In the end they are running, like they did in the beginning. This is unique because it starts the same way in ends in a sense. Like a good friend, George decides that it’s best to stop running and encourages Lennie to go onto the dream farm and puts a bullet into Lennie’s head. This is really interesting due to the fact that it not only started how
it ended, but so many items like the snake in the water clued into the fact that this was sudden and Lennie had no idea what was about to happen. The way this story was constructed was to not understand until the end and then the reader gets Steinbeck’s underlying meanings. All in all, these elements and techniques leads to an amazing story which is what the curriculum needs to keep readers interested. All in all, this book is an amazing piece of literature. It has a very thought out plot, well described characterization, and can give a reader good reading skills. There is enough evidence here that Of Mice and Men should defiantly be kept in the school curriculum.