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Steinbeck

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Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men

Steinbeck uses Crooks and Curley’s wife to portray Loneliness for minority people working on Ranches in the 1930’s; he uses precursors; light and dark to shape our response to these characters.
One of the first precursors in the book is the tittle. Steinbeck has taken this from Robert Burns’ poem which says ’the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley’. This translates to the best laid plans of mice and men do often go awry. This tells us that Steinbeck has intentions to place bad things in the book to throw everyone off the trail they wish to follow or achieve.
A person who Steinbeck has almost made clear from the start who is a trouble maker is Curley’s wife. From the moment we meet her in the book Steinbeck says she has ‘she had full rouged lips and wide-spaced eyes, heavily made up. Her finger nails were red.’ Steinbeck writes it out to show she is a warning sign. He has made her all dressed up in red to show this.
Steinbeck then focuses on her actions. He first focuses on her voice ‘her voice had a nasal, brittle quality. This says that she is trying to put on a tone for the new boys to try and get noticed. Then Steinbeck writes ‘She put her hands behind her back and leaned against the door frame so that her body was thrown forward.’ This is also showing that she wants to be noticed. Steinbeck has done this to show that she has been lonely and that she really wants to be noticed. She then starts to talk playfully with George and Lennie to try and entice them. Steinbeck does this to show us that this is a main threat for George and Lennie. Then to cut her off Slim enters and it is then a precursor for danger later in the story.
On these same pages someone in the background shouts ‘Stable – Buck. Oh! Sta-able Buck’ it is not until page 56 that we realise the Stable Buck is Crooks. Crooks is a crippled Negro. Steinbeck

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