Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Of Mice and men is a novella written by John Steinbeck. This story portrays two struggling men, who have been hit by the great depression. They wander around trying to find work, and in the process they meet characters who will change their liives forever. The central conflict in Of Mice and Men is character vs. character because, in this story one of of the main characters Lennie is having a hard time dealing with people who aren't’ like his best friend George. He comes in contact with more than two other characters that really test who he is, and what he’s all about. But he hasn’t completely grasped who to deal with conflict so most of the time its just his anger answering for him.
In Of Mice and Men Lennie is having a hard time really following the rules at the new barn, Curley and Curley’s wife constantly want to do wrong by Lennie even though he’s never done anything to them. When Lennie is alone people start to pick on him, and without George he’s lost.
“George says, I ain’t to have nothing to do with you- talk to you or nothing.” She laughed, “George giving you orders about everything”. (86)
Lennie obviously know that he’s not supposed to talking to Curly’s wife, but her goal is to try and get Lennie in trouble. Her whole goal in this book is to get all the men in trouble. Lennie is so un-educated that he doesn’t realize that George is telling him to stay away from Curly’s wife for his own good. Because if the fact that Curly’s wife doesn’t know when to back off she causes the biggest conflict in the book-the conflict of death. Curly’s wife is right George does always give Lennie’s order, but 99.9% of the time if Lennie had listened he would have avoided a major conflict between characters. If Lennie had listened to George Curly’s wife would have never died. I just think George should have a more efficient way to really get Lennie to understand talking to her is bad.
Lennie decided to walk into Crook’s room and have a conversation, because he was bored. But Crooks, the only African American on the ranch and a constant target of discrimination, doesn’t want anyone in his room. So he wants Lennie to understand why and how he feels this way; but like Curley’s wife he doesn’t know that mentioning certain things to Lennie can cause him to explode.
“We’ll s’pose, jus s’pose he don’t come back, what’ll you do then”. Lennie’s face wrinkled with apprehension. “I don’ know, say, what you doin anyways?” he cried. “This ain’t true, George ain’t got hurt”. (72)
All crook’s meant by saying this was, what if Lennie didn’t’ have anyone to defend him. What if he was alone? That’s all he meant but; Lennie doesn’t understand that so once again he has this though that, George hates him, and because of this he wants to hurt crooks. If people would only leave Lennie alone. People around the ranch don’t know how far Lennie can go, how crazy and dangerous Lennie really gets under fear. It seems like with every character or the majority are really testing Lennie for who he is. I know this has nothing to do with my thesis but still all the other characters seem to be testing Lennie on who he is with himself. With ought these characters testing who Lennie is in the inside there would be know conflict on the outside.
Ever since Curley met Lennie he’s had beef with him just because he’s a big guy. So everyone including George expected them to get into it just because. Lennie doesn’t like to fight with people but sometimes he has to because he doesn’t understand everything, but the conflict with Lennie was started out of just pure hate.
Lennie took his hands away from his face and looked about for George, and Curley slashed at
his eyes, the big face was covered with blood. (63)
In this fight shown above, once again another problem escalated into something that shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Curly didn’t need to start an unnecessary fight and because of this he broke his hand. People think they can just pick on Lennie because he has a slight mental disability but he still can beat anyone up if he needed to. This is one of those particular cases, where he had to defend himself so someone had to get hurt in order for them to do that. Before the fight even started Lennie was calling on George to help him, he listened to George which was the right thing to do, but it seems like at the end Steinbeck gives some details. Details that seems like Lennie is just second guessing should he have hurt curly or not. Once again he’s having a conflict vs a character; two in this case.
In conclusion I have proved how the main conflict is character vs. character. But overall I think this story has the same conflict as any other book. I believe Steinbeck didn’t want his central conflict to be known. So many other people have choose different conflicts; I just believe this book has know real main conflict it just have a bunch of different conflicts.The characters have friends and enemies so there’s nothing different. I don't really think this story is important to real life besides informing people how hard the depression was.