“Of Mice and Men” Coursework Essay Example For Students

â€Å"Of Mice and Men† Coursework Essay Explore the sense of an ending in the novel and how central this is to the book. In â€Å"Of Mice and Men†, Steinbeck built up a sense of an ending which is applied throughout the entire novel. For this he linked several and different aspects and characters which follow the story and make it successful. In this novel, the sense of an ending is showed by a few techniques the author used through the whole book. Firstly, he makes the reader feel it is the end in the last chapter; he brings us back to the same place as in the first chapter in which the natural setting is similar : â€Å"Salinas River†, â€Å"deep pool†, â€Å"Gabilan mountains†, â€Å"among the sycamores†, it is like a cycle that finishes where it started. In the beginning of these both chapters, Steinbeck starts with a description of nature. But not only the setting is repeated. The content is as well resembling: Lennies thoughts and Lennie and Georges conversation mirror the opening: for example in both chapters they discuss about rabbits and about their dream ranch. However, these similarities actually emphasize the change that have been made with these persona through the story: in chapter one they had their great plan about the ranch and we feel they believed in it, and now in chapter six this plan seems to be left out. This feeling of an end comes as well when George tells the ritual story, the dream, a last time: â€Å"We gonna get a little place Well have a cow An well have maybe a pig an chickens †. Unlike in the middle of the book, the lack of details in his speech gives us the sense it is the last time George tells this; it shows he doesnt believe in it anymore. Furthermore, we can feel in the way he speaks that somethings wrong, he is very hesitating and he seems stressed and worried. This dream is very important to the novel because it is a narrative and narratives always have an ending. Secondly, some symbols reveal were close to the end. There is â€Å"Carlsons Luger† -which is actually the gun used to kill Candys dog- and which George took just before going to see Lennie. This gives us the feeling of a death coming, in other words, the feeling of an end coming. There is also the death of Candys dog because the author reflected Lennies death to it: both characters were seen as a nuisance, they were smelly and miserable. On the other side, their â€Å"master†s reaction are different and contradictory: for Candys dog shooting, someone else had to do it instead of Candy. And just after agreeing to kill his dog, Candy went and â€Å"stared at the ceiling†. And this suggests a need of thinking, of being alone. But for Lennies shooting, firstly George did it himself, and secondly he didnt want nor need to be alone, he actually went in and get a drink with Slim. So this gets the reader to ask himself questions as: â€Å"Is George really saddened by Lennies death?† Or â€Å"Does he regret it?† And finally there is the heron eating the water snake in the beginning of the last chapter: â€Å"A silent head and beak lanced down and plucked it out the head, and the beak swallowed the little snake while its tail waved frantica lly†. The death of this water snake is very short and fast. It prepares us to Lennies death, which will be same. Finally, there are the effects we feel throughout the book which prepare us as well to Lennies death. The emotional effects developed for the killing of the dog and the snake (which are pity and empathy) will be the same ones for Lennies killing. Of Mice And Men Essay SummaryThe impossibility of happiness in this novel is expressed by an essential technique used to survive: dreaming, which is a concept that follows George and Lennie throughout the book and which is linked to the sense of an ending of it because the impossibility of happiness is what puts an end to Lennies character (it is the reason why George killed him, as told in the previous paragraph). Candy also contributes to the sense of an ending because he is linked to the dream ranch George and Lennie are dreaming of. This character was, above all, alone and powerless: hes part of â€Å"the weak ones†, as Curleys wife says. It is shown by his physical description as well as his language: â€Å"stick-like wrist†, â€Å"stooped-shouldered†, â€Å"bristly white whiskers†, â€Å"shifted, â€Å"shuffled† (as Lennie), â€Å"the old swamper†. Our first impression of this character is that hes an old man, finishing his life in the barn, that hes a dominated character, behaving like Lennie, His physical description isnt comic at all, on the contrary it should makes us feel pity for him just as the author tries to. He is a victim of nature because of his age, hes handicapped because of his missing hand and because of it swamping is the only job he can do so we can almost say hes useless, and all these aspects suggest he represents injustice. But he also brings hope: he takes part of George and Lennies dream and tries everything to make it come true: â€Å"Oh George! I been figurin and figurin. I got it doped out how we can make some money on them rabbits†, â€Å"Spose I went in with you guys. Thas three hundred an fifty bucks Id put in. I aint much good, but I could cook and tend the chickens and hoe the garden some†. With this, we feel like he doesnt have anything to do with his life anymore and that he wants to put some action in it by actually trying to make this dream come true. Curleys wife is part of the ending of the novel: her death is the last event before Lennies death. Her own ending is felt by the audience from the beginning: shes the only woman in the barn, shes alone, and this clearly justifies why she died; she didnt belong there. So Steinbeck chose to create sympathy for this character. He does this by several ways. Firstly by placing her in a relationship where she is alone: shes victim of her husband, shes never with him and therefore looks for him (â€Å"Im looking for Curley†), shes the only woman in the barn (not in the book because there is also Aunt Clara) and she complains. Her physical image is a key symbol to her: â€Å"She had full, rouged lips and wide-spaced eyes, heavily made up; her fingernails were red. Her hair hung in little rolled clusters, like sausages. She wore a cotton house dress and red mules, on the insteps of which were little bouquets of red ostrich feathers†; she seems to want to be and to feel pretty, to put some femininity in the barn therefore to show shes a real woman and not to become like the men with which she lives everyday. So the sense of an ending in this novel is felt because of symbols, emotional effects, several techniques used by the author, different links between characters and aspects of the novel, and the use of narratives which proves us that every narrative has its beginning, and its end.