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Themes - Coggle Diagram
Themes
Human Fragility
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Joy is something to be snatched while possible, but is not something that most humans ever achieve for long
There is no real thematic link between the mice in the title and the mice that Lennie likes to stroke.
Lennie's mice are used, rather, as a motif that echoes his vulnerabilty throughout the novel.
“A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely, and he gets sick.” :pencil2:
“I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why.” — Lennie :pencil2:
Dreams and Reality
George and Lennie's dream is of a very small farm, a patch of land which they own themselves.
It is a dream of working for themselves, of being independent and it is a dream sufficiently powerful to draw in Candy and, temporarily, even the cynical Crooks.
Curley's wife also has a pathetic dream of being a movie star; and the ranch hands dream of being the cowboy heroes they read about in the pulp magazines
“We're gonna have a little house and a couple of acres an' a cow and some pigs and—” - George :pencil2:
“Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land.” - Crooks :pencil2:
“Coulda been in the movies, an’ had nice clothes—all them nice clothes like they wear.” - CW :pencil2:
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Loneliness
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Steinbeck offers no answers to loneliness, merely a graphic and moving portrayal of the problem.
“I get lonely. You can talk to people, but I can’t talk to nobody but Curley.” :pencil2:
"Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world" :pencil2:
“A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don’t make no difference who the guy is, long’s he’s with you.” :pencil2:
Relationships
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The happiest people - Slim, the Boss and Carlson are not in any kind of relationship - relationships are a guarantee of pain to come and therefore not worth having
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"Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world" - George
"But not us... because I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you." - Lennie:pencil2:
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