Why Does Steinbeck Use Animals Analysis
To what extent does Steinbeck use animals in ‘Of Mice and Men’?
Of mice and men was set in the late 1930’s when there was the great depression due to the wall street crash. Topics that have been covered in the novella are the poverty the migrant workers faced, the loneliness and friendship. I will discuss the use of animals and natural imagery.
To begin with, Steinbeck describes Lennie as an animal. This is because whilst he is drinking from a river and this shows that he has a wild personality as he is drinking from a dirty river. He drank using his ‘big paws’. ‘Paws’ implies that he hasn’t got hands like a human but paws like a bear or a dog. This would link back to the time period as people used dogs to heard sheep. ‘Big’ suggests that he is quite large which contradicts his partner as George of small. George respond to this by saying ‘you’d drink out of a gutter’. ‘Gutter’ suggests that he is quite animalistic as animals don’t have much sense to drink clean water. This also puts a lot of emphasis to his wild personality and simplicity. Therefore, through the use of the theme of animalistic and his disability, Steinbeck shows the importance of animals. …show more content…
He uses water snakes and a heron, each time a water snake passes by the heron would kill it and eat it. ‘a water snake glided smoothly…head from side to side.’ This means that the water snake is quite scared as he looking around to see if there is danger. This represents Lennie as he was always trying to be calm and wanting to stay out of trouble. This however does not lead to a good place as the water snake dies and so does Lennie but by George and not Curly because he wanted him to die happily and not in vengeance. Steinbeck begins the story is nature and ends it in nature to show how significant it is for the story. Also animals live in nature so this show that Steinbeck goes to certain extents to show why it is so
Of mice and men was set in the late 1930’s when there was the great depression due to the wall street crash. Topics that have been covered in the novella are the poverty the migrant workers faced, the loneliness and friendship. I will discuss the use of animals and natural imagery.
To begin with, Steinbeck describes Lennie as an animal. This is because whilst he is drinking from a river and this shows that he has a wild personality as he is drinking from a dirty river. He drank using his ‘big paws’. ‘Paws’ implies that he hasn’t got hands like a human but paws like a bear or a dog. This would link back to the time period as people used dogs to heard sheep. ‘Big’ suggests that he is quite large which contradicts his partner as George of small. George respond to this by saying ‘you’d drink out of a gutter’. ‘Gutter’ suggests that he is quite animalistic as animals don’t have much sense to drink clean water. This also puts a lot of emphasis to his wild personality and simplicity. Therefore, through the use of the theme of animalistic and his disability, Steinbeck shows the importance of animals. …show more content…
He uses water snakes and a heron, each time a water snake passes by the heron would kill it and eat it. ‘a water snake glided smoothly…head from side to side.’ This means that the water snake is quite scared as he looking around to see if there is danger. This represents Lennie as he was always trying to be calm and wanting to stay out of trouble. This however does not lead to a good place as the water snake dies and so does Lennie but by George and not Curly because he wanted him to die happily and not in vengeance. Steinbeck begins the story is nature and ends it in nature to show how significant it is for the story. Also animals live in nature so this show that Steinbeck goes to certain extents to show why it is so