'Critisism on Curleys Wife Essay\r'

'For Of Mice and Men is a Tragedy, a tragedy non in the pin up modern guts of a immaculate ‘sad degree’ (though it certainly is that), further a tragedy in the incorrupt Aristotelian/Shakespeargonan awareness of screening homophileity’s achievement of enormousness through and in spite of defeat. any(prenominal) plenty seem to believe that the chromo any(prenominal) mapping of literature is to provide vicarious â€Å" joyous endings,” to provide in words a sugary sweetness we would corresponding to switch got scarcely put up non invariably dumbfound in real flavour. To such people, true(p) literary tragedy is dis examineful. just now the enormousest writers and the bulgeflank ratifiers know that literature is non always entirely mere sugar glaze over; it merchantman sometimes be a immobile medicine: sour perhaps †at least to the untrained taste †scarcely necessary for continued health[.] two(prenominal) readers may object to the account book’s presentation of low class temperaments, uncut language, scenes suggestive of improper sexual conduct, and an implied condemnation of the social system. exactly n cardinal of this is presented indecently, or beyond the ordinary norms of contemporary literature. Compargond to galore(postnominal) modern works, (or to movies and TV) this book is tame indeed.\r\nFurther much, these features be necessary in this book in two ways. First, they atomic number 18 part of the stainless precise reporting of the reality of a particular time and purpose and environment. recess of Steinbeck’s literary tear d feature is that this is true to animateness. As such, the nasty details atomic number 18 part of Steinbeck’s enlargement of the repose of Tragedy, the democratization of the tragical being. Tradition whollyy, the subjects of Tragedies charter been Kings and former(a) Great atomic number 53s: Job, Oedipus, Lear. scarce ly Steinbeck’s item †a truly Ameri hobo point †is that only men are created able: Tragedy exists n onenesstheless among the lowly of the public; even the least of us †even a Lennie or a George †has the hu military man potential for tragic nobility. Of Mice and Men is a tragedy in the modern usage of The Hairy Ape and Death of a Salesman. Second, the grossness is a way of presenting concisely the complex turmoil of life. This book is not stereotype melodrama. It is not a honestminded book.\r\n at that pip are no purely gloomy people in it. Conversely, on that point are no purely sound people in it either. completely the characters are complex mixtures of skilful and problematic, or kind of of bad results from practiced objectives. They are all †in their ability and in their outlook †confine. And they put up in a gross and dirty clementness. Given their target in that domain, they are not able to achieve much. But they a re trying to do the ruff they can; they are trying to be good people and to fill good hots. They agree good intentions. They have direful repulses. The tragedy is that, bound as the characters are, the humans they hot in is even more limited; it is a world in which the simplest hallucination of the simplest man †poor dimmed bountiful Lennie †cannot contract true. â€Å"The best put plans of mice and men gang oft a-glae [go oft a-stray],” wrote Robert Burns in the poem which provides the book’s title and its theme. And Steinbeck’s legend stages why: The best laid plans go oft astray because they come in conflict with one another.\r\nThe simplest good intention †simply to stay alive †of a simple mouse, a simple pup, a simple preadolescent woman, is thwarted by Lennie’s urge to ducky something quiet and beautiful. Lennie’s drive to touch debaucher polishs the things he loves. But his problem is the equal probl em that bothers Curley, the node’s son, the walking(prenominal) thing to a villain in the book. Like Lennie, Curley doesn’t know how to turn endure on to what he examines important: his low wife, his status as the Boss’s son, his reputation as a man. He loses from each(prenominal) one by trying to concur on overly tightly. Curley’s aim to be a respected hubby/boss/man is foiled by his own limited abilities. The similar barely simpler aim of Lennie and George to have a little(a) send of their own where they can â€Å"live offa the fatta the lan ” is unsaved to frustration as well as by their own limitations and the tragic orbit of circumstance and coincidence that ends with Lennie dead by George’s hand.\r\nThe point, of course, is that they all †we all †live in a also limited world, a world in which not all our dreams can come true, a world in which we †all of us some of the time and some of us all the time à ¢â‚¬ are doomed to disappointment. The tragic dilemma is that for our basic humanity, for the duty of our aims, we all deserve better than we get. But because of our human limitations, by our rachiticnesses of character, none of us is constantly good enough to bring in what we deserve. Some philosophers, seeing this dilemma, pronounce unintelligible pessimism for humanity. Some religions promise for this world’s disappointments supernatural intercession and other-worldly compensations. The tragic point of view (the view of Shakespeare, the Greek tragedians, the Old testament Job, and John Steinbeck) finds in it the chance for nobility of soul: even in the blackest of disappointments, a human can achieve various(prenominal) ampleness. One may be thwarted physically †but one use up not be crushed spiritually.\r\nOne can remain true to one’s dream and true to one’s friend. We humans may die, but we can love one another. Friendship. Love. That also is what Of Mice and Men is all about. Lennie and George, disparate types, are, against all good reason, friends. They percent a good dream. They love one another. They are too limited, too inarticulate, to know how to say it, but they do show it †or rather Steinbeck shows it to us readers. So the book treats the grand themes of Dreams and Death and Love with simple tidy clarity. It does so with a classically soigne social system †another reason for employ the book as a teach tool: it allows a reader †peculiarly an untrained or beginning reader of literature †to see (or be shown) how bodily structure supports and presents content. Of Mice and Men has the classic situation/ branch/twist/and/resolution plot structure uncluttered by diversions, distr executions, or subplots. in that respect is inevitableness, a sensekness that makes the point of the story unavoidable.\r\nThe story has the classic unities of time and place and action. It begins in a small key of beautiful nature, a hush-hush summer camp in the woods by a stream; it moves to the buildings of a California ranch, and ends back in the woods by the stream. The call is simple: clear, manage sentences of description and action, direct quotation of the speech of simple people. some long words, no hard words. The action is simple: two poor and musca volitans workers, big, dumb Lennie and small, clever George, take jobs at a large ranch. Lennie has trouble with the Boss’s son, Curley. Lennie accidentally †more or less †kills Curley’s wife. George kills Lennie to save him from the horrors of a lynch mob led by Curley, bent on revenge. The settings are simple in detail, and simply powerfully symbolic.\r\nThe secluded spot in the woods by the stream is the uncomplicated world of record; the bunkhouse is the bleak home of hired working(a) men trying to make sense of their lives and gain comfort in a limited environment; the barn is the place of worki ng life, of seed and harvest, birth and closing; the harness room with Crook’s bunk symbolizes social constraints; the â€Å"little place of our own” about which George and Lennie dream and all too vaguely plan is the enlightenment on earth we all accept for. The characters, too, are simple yet significant. â€Å" range with an individual, and before you know it you find you have created a type,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald; â€Å"begin with a type, and you find that you have created †nothing.” Steinbeck begins with individuals: clearly and sharply crafted characters, a whole set of individuals who are so clearly realized that each †without surrendering identicalness †becomes a type, an archetype, a universal character: There is dulcify, the old, one-armed worker with no place to go, as useless as his toothless dog; on that point is Carlson, gruffly and deliberately â€Å"unfeeling,” who can coolly kill old Candy’s antedil uvian patriarch dog simply because â€Å"he stinks” and â€Å"he ain’t no good to you”; and thither is Crooks, the dignified proud and aloof but befriendless and lonely dupe of racial discrimination.\r\nThere is Slim, calm, reasonable, compassionate, the real attraction of men. And there is Curley, the arrogant but inapt Boss’s son. The man who could whiz well does not have the impersonate; the one who has the position and the authority is not a true leader. Curley hides his insecurities behind a mask of macho toughness. His competitive rhodomontade makes him push too far and Lennie, afterwards enduring much, is fleetn permission by George to â€Å"get him.” Lennie in self-protection crushes Curley’s fist in his own big hand, crippling Curley somewhat as Candy and Crooks have been crippled by the relatiative harshness of life. Curley is also the one man who has a woman. But clearly he does not †does not know how to †cite to her as a person. She is to him a thing, a possession, a sex-object and a status symbol.\r\nFor the men, in braggadocio, he flaunts the sexuality of the relationship; and yet, out of his own self-doubts he is intensely grasping of the men’s awareness of her. The young woman has no name †she is yet â€Å"Curley’s wife.” She knows she wants †and somehow deserves †something better than this. â€Å"I don’t like Curley,” she says of her husband. She has hoity-toity ambitions of being a Hollywood star â€Å"in the pitchers.” She is a lost little girl in a world of men whose knowledge of women is largely limited to memories of kind old ladies and rumors of casual prostitution. All these men are afraid of Curley’s wife, afraid and aware that her innocent carnal appeal may lead them into temptation and trouble. In self-protection they avoid her. all Lennie, in naive goodness, actually relates to her as a person to a pers on. She duologue to him. For a little time they share in their aesthetic sense; they both admire dish aerial. Unfortunately, she is too naive, and Lennie is too strong and clumsy.\r\nIn trying †at her invitation †to pet her lovely hair he is panicked by her quick resistance, and ends by killing her. Just as he had front killed a puppy and a mouse. Curley’s wife, a naive Romantic, wants love and marrow in a harsh crude Naturalistic world; Lennie, big and ignorant, tries to give love. But he is too weak in the mind, too strong in the body. His tenderness is too powerful for weaker, unsuspecting creatures. We readers can identify with Lennie. We sympathize; we empathize. We care. We have †most of us †been in his position; not quite able to dish out with the complexities of the world around us, wanting only security, peace, comfort, and something soft and beautiful to pet and love. perhaps one reason that this book has elicited controversy and censor ious action is that it is so simple and clear and easy to visit †and so painful! It hurts to read this book. And some people don’t like their books to hurt them; they want soothing.\r\nBut great Tragedy is meant to hurt. One needn’t patronage wholly to the Aristotelian doctrine of ‘ purging’ by Art to see that one function of literature is to help us deal with the pain of real life by practicing with the vicarious pains of tragic art. Of course Of Mice and Men contains unpleasant attitudes; there is brutality, racism, sexism, economic exploitation. But the book does not advocate them; rather it shows that these too-narrow conceptions of human life are part of the cause of human tragedy. They are forces which frustrate human aspiration. Lennie and George have a noble dream. They are personally too limited to make it come true, but they do try. They try to help each other, and they even enlarge their dream to include old one-handed Candy and crippled black Crooks.\r\nTheirs is the American Dream: that there is somehow, somewhere, sometime, the possibility that we can make our enlightenment on earth, that we can have our own self-sufficient little place where we can live off the fat of the land as peaceful friends. What is sad, what is tragic, what is horrible, is that the Dream may not come true because we are †each and all of us †too limited, too selfish, too much in conflict with one another. â€Å"Maybe ever’-body in the whole damn world is scared of each other,” says Slim. And George expresses the effects of loneliness, â€Å"Guys that go around alone don’t have no fun. After a long time they get mean. They get wantin’ to fight all the time.” What is ennobling in this tragedy of mice and men is the Revelation of a way beyond that loneliness and denseness and fighting, a way to rise preceding(prenominal) our human limitations: Two men †Lennie and George †who have nothi ng else, do have each other.\r\nâ€Å"We kinda look after each other.” says George. And they do have their Dream. And the Dream is there even in the final defeat. For in the end the one thing George can do for Lennie is to make sure he’s happy as he dies. He has Lennie â€Å"look acrost the river you can close to see [the place].” And as Lennie says, â€Å"Let’s get that place now,” George kills him mercifully. It’s a horrible thing to do, and George knows that. And we know that. But in this limited world in this limited way it is all that George can do for his friend. And he does it.\r\nThat is the horror and the nobility which together make up Tragedy. The tragic pattern closes. There is a sense of completeness, of both defeat and satisfaction. In Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck has shown us something about the pain of living in a complex human world and created something beautiful from it. In true great literature the pain of Life is transmut ed into the beauty of Art. The book is worth reading for a glimpse of that beauty †and worth precept as a way to show others how such beauty works.\r\n'