Charlie Wu
Of Mice and Men
John Stienbeck
Historical Fiction
Just Right
Just Finished
1. I have just finished Of Mice and Men by John Stienbeck. It is about two men, Lennie and George. Lennie and George are trying to make money to buy a piece of land for themselves. Lennie has a mental disability. He is very big and is physically strong, but is very naive. He is fascinated by soft things. George on the other hand, is smart. He is very self controlled, and takes care of Lennie. George and Lennie go to work on a farm in California. Curley, the boss's son, dislikes Lennie because he is strong and big, while Curley is small and insecure. Lennie is also fascinated by Curley's wife because she is physically very soft. Eventually, Lennie kills Curley's wife on accident. Because of this, George is forced to kill Lennie. At the end of the book, George sets out once again, with another character, Slim.
2. I personally felt the book was not that great. I would give it a 7 out of 10. I did not like the book, but I felt the characters were great, and the foreshadowing was creative. I disliked how fast the book was going, and how some chapters felt pointless. Sometimes, I got bored and just skimmed the pages.
3. I felt an example of a theme was family. There were many different families in Of Mice and Men. The biggest example was Lennie and George. George took care of Lennie, and made sure he did not cause any trouble. Another example was the bunkhouse. Even though they were not a typical family, they took care of each other Candy and his dog was another family. Candy cared for the dog very much, and was very sad when the dog had to be put down.
4. My favorite character in Of Mice and Men was George. I liked George because he was smart, and tried to stay out of trouble. He also took care of Lennie, even though he could have abandoned him at any time. He also is very mature, and tells Lennie to let him do all the talking. Lennie respects George, and usually listens to him.
5. My least favorite character was Curley. He always bullied Lennie because of his size, and was very insecure. I think he felt the need to bully people to make sure that he was "superior" to them, while on the inside he felt as if he was not. No one liked him, or his attitude. I also felt that he was stuck up, and arrogant. He was also the boss' son, and he may have felt like he was better then everyone else.
6. I would have never guessed the ending. The ending is George killing Lennie. At first, I thought the ending would be Lennie and George getting their piece of land. After Lennie killing Curley's wife, I would have thought they would head out again, and the book would repeat itself. The ending was very shocking. I think that Slim will replace Lennie and form a family with George.
Charlie,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you when you say that Curley is you least favorite character was also Curley because of his cruelness to Lennie, George and the whole bunk house. Also I agree that since Curley was so small that he felt intimidated by Lennie's size and immense strength.
But Mr. Wu I disagree in your choice of the best character. I really think that Lennie is the best character because throughout the book he has to struggle because of his disability and his over powerful strength that he never learned how to use. I do think t hat George is a very important character but he is not my first choice because he is at times very mean and rude.
Overall I throughout that the book was pretty good, but at times it was very confusing to understand who the different characters were and what they were doing, also i thought that the characters names were close to the same so I would occasionally get to characters with close sounding names. The book was better if it was in smaller chunks not as a whole.
sincerely,
Ben Browne