Of Mice And Men: Burdens Of Responsibility Essay, Research Paper

Of Mice and Men: Burdens of Responsibility

“OF MICE AND MEN IS A NOVEL WHICH EXPLORES THE BURDENS OF RESPONSIBILITY AS MUCH

AS ITS REWARDS.”

By evaluating the novel of mice and men carefully I have found that every

character in the novel has a

facet of life that consists of burdens and responsibilities. The characters in

the novel basically have three options in which they can live their lives. They

can knuckle down, work hard, keep a positive frame of mind and try earnestly to

improve their standard of living. An example of this is would be George Milton

and Lennie Small. The other option is to walk around with a chip on their

shoulder, not bother to improve oneself but eradicate those around him or her

that serve as a frustration or nuisance. An ideal example of this would be

Curley when he decides to target Lennie as a’frustration’ and subsequently

attacks him with no real valid reason apart from jealousy and spite. The last

option concerns Candy and Crooks to an extent. They live a fairly meaningless

life void of love and affection. They have few friendships and cling to anyone

who shows them sincere attention. An example of this is when Lennie has a

conversation with Crooks and he expresses his feelings of loneliness. Another

example is when Carlson shoots Candy’s dog. Candy becomes very eager to attach

himself to George and lennie and purchase a house with them as a result of the

loss of his only real love in his life.

The responsibilities of aspiration and hope play a major role in the structure

of George, Lennie and Curley’s wife’s character. To an extent their aspirations

protect them from reality for short stints and acts like a recharge to their

motivational batteries. This is a good thing more often than not. Examples of

these instances are when Lennie and George are sitting on the bank of a pool of

the Salinas river in the last chapter. George is in the process of telling

Lennie how together they are “gonna get a little place.” He does this because he

knows it makes Lennie happy and he wants Lennie’s last thoughts to be of his

ideal world not terror. George then shoots Lennie in the back of the head doing

whats best for everyone, and Lennie dies in a state of utopia, his reward. An

example of Curley’s wife’s hopes is when she finally finds a person around the

ranch who sees her not as an object of lust but someone to talk to. This person

is Lennie. Of course he subsequently snaps her neck when they are both in a

state of hysteria, but for a brief moment she was a step closer to her hope.

Talking to Lennie was her reward in a sense.

The responsibilities of friendship, whether it be marriage as with Curley and

his wife or mateship as in Lennie and George’s situation, also play a vital role.

George and Lennie’s friendship is an ideal one where they both respect, help and

love each other in their eyes. There is an example of this unity at the start of

the novel when both George and Lennie are sitting around a fire ready to make

dinner. Referring to their baked beans Lennie makes the comment of “I like ?em

with ketchup.” After this comment George explodes into a verbal rage explaining

how he could have so much fun by himself and how much of a burden Lennie is to

him. When George finishes his ?speech’ Lennie attempts to reconcile by

explaining to George how he could go and live in a cave in the hills. This ?

guilt trip’ delivers a realisation to George that he has been nasty. They then

patch things up by discussing their utopia. Curley and his wife’s marriage is

filled with mixed emotions and motives. Curley is filled with disgust for his

wife for marrying such a poor choice of a ?man’ and he expresses this by

attempting to control her, ever worried that she will cheat on him. He is very

paranoid. She used him to get out of a situation she was not comfortable with

and is now in a worse one where she cannot communicate with anyone properly.

She has become a prisoner. Curley and his wife take a negative approach towards

their marriage therefore getting little out of the relationship and no real

rewards. George and Lennie on the other hand ?feed’ off each other in a sense

and grow in responsibility and love.

The rewards of responsibility vary in size and quality. As a result of George

and Lennie’s commitment towards each other they are rewarded with friendship and

companionship. Crooks’s alienation delivers to him humility and a realisation

of how it is very difficult to function without friendship, he has gained

knowledge at a price. His bitterness and anger also get him through life unlike

Candy. Curley’s wife’s reward has turned into a burden, she is free from her

mother but no longer is granted a social life. Candy had his hand severed off at

work and is rewarded by compensation and an easier workload. But he is disabled

and lonely due to the departure of his dog making his life sad and without

meaning. Due to Curley’s bloodlines he probably never will get retrenched, but

no body likes him not even his wife.

In my opinion the burdens outweigh the rewards of responsibility in this novel.

In some ways it is rather macabre that John Steinbeck builds his characters up

to their most probable height of achieving their utopia and then kills them or

part of them off. But in another perspective this style of writing is quite

ingenuitive because the main characters set out with a goal and when they manage

to grasp a fragment of it they wither away or die. This is as if their purpose

in the story has been served. Their services are no longer needed to help get

the message across that life can either be a responsibility of burdens or a

rewards full of responsibilities.