John Steinback’s ‘Of Mice and Men’ Essay

John Steinbacks ‘Of Mice and Men’ is a tale of two travelling workers in the harsh depression years of 1930s America. Steinback uses a ‘Cyclical Structure’ upon finishing the book I noticed many similarities between the first and last chapter. The first similarity was the location. In Chapter One Steinback mentions a deserted place near a non-flowing pool, and then introduces both Lennie and George, the same happens in the last chapter but this time Lennie is alone having run away from the ranch. Lennie is shown to the readers as simple-minded and so Steinback uses this to an advantage; ‘His huge companion dropped his blankets and flung himself down and drank from the surface of the green pool; drank with long gulps, snorting into the water like a horse†¦ Lennie dipped his whole head under, hat and all, and then he sat up on the bank and his hat dripped down on his blue coat and ran down his back†¦ Lennie dabbled his big paw in the water and wiggled his fingers so the water arose in little splashes; rings widened across the pool to the other side and came back again, Lennie watched them go. ‘Look George. Look what I done.’ Steinback mentions the drinking of the pool water later in Chapter Six. The second similarity that I noticed was of the dream that Lennie and George shared. Just like a little child, Lennie likes the idea of their dream and asks for it to be repeated on numerous occasions. The most significant times are mentioned in the book; at the beginning where they both feel that they are able to achieve the dream and at the end, just before George shoots Lennie. Lennie has this ‘problem’ where once he holds onto to something he can’t let go. In Chapter One George and Lennie are running away from a ranch in Weed, due to Lennie holding onto a girl’s red silk dress, as he felt the silk, the girl thought that she was going to be sexually assaulted and so panicked. She ran off to tell the other ranch workers giving George and Lennie time to run off. In the Last Chapter Lennie runs from the Soledad ranch to the brush area because he killed Curley’s wife. Having to put up with Lennie’s bad behavior, George feels pressurized and so says that he could live a lot better without Lennie; ‘Why, I could stay in a cat house all night. I could eat any place I want, hotel or any place, and order any damn thing I could think of.’ This is all mentioned in Chapter One and in the last chapter George’s feelings are represented by Lennie’s hallucination in the form of Aunt Clara; ‘ And then from out of Lennie’s head there came a little fat old woman. She wore thick bull’s-eye glasses and she wore a huge gingham apron with pockets, and she was starched and clean. She stood in front of Lennie and put her hands on her hips, and frowned disapprovingly at him. And when she spoke, it was in Lennie’s voice. ‘ I tol’ you an’ tol’ you,’ ‘ I tol’ you â€Å"Min’ George because he’s such a nice fella an’ good to you† But you don’t never take no care. You do bad things. † You never give a thought to George, he’s been doin’ nice things for you alla time. When he got a piece a pie you always got half or more’n half†¦ All the time he coulda had such a good time if it wasn’t for you. He woulda took his pay an’ raised hell in a whorehouse, and he coulda set in a poolroom an’ played snooker. But he got to take care of you.’ Knowing that he has done something bad this time, Lennie reflects back the entire saying’s that him and George said before going to work on the ranch in Soledad. From the Ketchup argument Lennie threatens to leave George and climb up into the mountains, yet again in the last chapter he threatens to go off into the caves to ‘Aunt Clara’. Steinbacks use of language describing the water snake and the heron gives the reader a very secretive message; If your not careful something bad may happen, and just like the watersnake being caught by the heron, the watersnake represents Lennie and the heron represents George.