LAST BLOG POST!

This week in reading:

Hey Hey, to all of you who have followed my blog through the last weeks. So this weeks reading has been crazy!! Something happened that I didn’t see coming. Even though I was expecting some kind of climax at the end of the book, I didn’t expect the book to end this way.

Warning!! BIG spoiler alert! You don’t want to read this if you are thinking about reading this book yourself!!

So Lennie received a puppy from one of the other farm workers and was super happy, I can honestly say that I was excited for Lennie at this point because he finally had something that he could pet. Unfortunately, Lennie once again did not listen to the instructions George gave him, which was to wait until the puppy was big enough to be petted. Lennie went into the barn to pet his puppy and he accidently killed it!! I know… very sad right, but it gets worse. Curleys wife shows up in the barn, while Lennie is trying to hide the dead puppy under hay. She asks Lennie what he is doing here, because she didn’t realize there was a puppy missing. So Curleys wife is lonely like always and keeps the conversation going, and offers Lennie to let him touch her soft hair. Lennie grabs her hair, gently at first, but then he pulls it a little too hard and Curleys wife starts screaming. Because of that Lennie freaks out and doesn’t know what to do, he forces his big hands over her mouth and chokes to death!😞 The poor guy Lennie didn’t even realize what he did until it was too late.

Since this happened when the other workers were at a bar, nobody noticed what happened right away. Lennie suddenly remembered what George told him in case something bad would happen to him. So Lennie did as George told him and hid in a bush where the book started. After coming back from the bar, George and the other workers know what Lennie did. Everybody tries to find Lennie to kill him for his action, but only George knows where he is hiding and finds him down by the water where they were sleeping the first night of arrival. George pulls out a gun and shoots his best friend in the back of the head!

Obviously George did this because he knew that Lennie was going to get killed anyways, so I don’t even know what to think about it at this point…

However, I want to say that it was a very well written book and it was worth reading! Really interesting to see how Steinbeck uses the characters in the book to relate them and teach us something about the social economical aspect in the United States during the 1930s. 

Blog Post #5
Focus on Social Studies:

Hello, this is my second to last blog post and now it’s time to look at the connection between my book, “Of Mice and Men, and the English Social Studies class I am taking right now. Last semester we learned a lot about the roaring 20s where the men returned from war and the economy was booming, but then the next decade wasn’t as bright! The 30s turned things upside down and the economic recession affected many people. It all started with the overproduction of Goods after World War 1, it was hard to find a market for the products during this period and the overproduction was one of the causes of the stock market crash in 1929. It is also known as the black Tuesday, Big stockholders were left with a debt too big to pay off. All this bankruptcy led to a huge amount of people being unemployed. First in 1933 when Franklin Roosevelt started his “New Deal” policy, it reversed the downward spiral. The depression is very much a part of John Steinbeck’s novel “Of mice and Men”, this is shown through many of the characters in the book like for instance George, Lennie, Candy and Crooks. However, this is not only in this novel where Steinbeck tells a story about the Great Depression era, like for example “Grapes of Wrath” where a family has to leave their farm behind to look for the Promised Land California. But enough about that, let’s go on talking about “Of Mice and Men” and how Steinbeck talks about the depression through the characters.

The first impression of George and Lennie already told us a lot about them, they are uneducated and very poor farm workers. Which was very usual in California during the national recession, many people came to the Promised Land California to find work. It almost seemed like people thought that California was not a part of the United States and therefore not affected by the recession. So as we know, there were many other migrant workers that went to California and had the same dream as George and Lennie, their own land. Steinbeck shows this through the only black character in the book, Crooks, when he says “I seen hundreds of men come by on the road an’ on the ranches, with their bindles on their back an’ that same damn thing in their heads . . . every damn one of ’em’s got a little piece of land in his head.” (section 4, page 99). Here Steinbeck first of shows us what segregation and lonliness does to a person over several years! You get cruel and don’t have faith in humanity or dreams anymore. However, Steinbeck also shows us that there have been so many migrant workers during the past which is explained by the poor conditions people had to live under. Another example of Steinbeck showing us the reality of the Depression is when we hear about the bunk house “...the walls were whitewashed and the floor unpainted…against the walls were eight bunks…over each bunk there was nailed an apple box with the opening forward so that it made two shelves for the personal belongings…”. I don’t know about you, but I am left with a picture in my head of a typical old farming bunk house after reading this.

 random picture of a bunkhouse, 1930s

John Steinbeck tells this story of the two migrant workers, George and Lennie, and at the same time tells us a lot about the Great Depression. It is crazy to think about the fantasy some authors have, sometimes it feels like John Steinbeck knew George and Lennie personally and just retells their story, as if he was part of it.

Blog Post #4
This week in reading:

In this weeks reading we get a closer look at Curley and his wife, and another review of the farm that Lennie, George and Candy want to buy and run. Or maybe I should call it daydreaming about their farm.

We also get a look at Crooks who is the handyman on the farm and lives alone in a room because he is black. As we already know, Steinbeck wrote this book in 1937 and there was a lot of racism and discrimination going on. Crooks is the character that definitely shows us how this segregation period even influenced the workers on a farm in California.

I just finished chapter 4 and in this chapter George and the other guys except Lennie, Candy (the old man) and Crooks, left to a whorehouse. Lennie decides to go into Crooks room which is something no white man has ever done since Crooks started working at the farm. Crooks tells him about his early life and Lennie tells him fantasies from the farm that he one day wants to live on and pet rabbits on. The old man Candy comes and joins them, which seems awkward at first for Crooks and Candy because Candy has never been in his room, but Crooks is just happy to have more company. Crooks even seems to open up and tells the guys about his loneliness, and how he feels separated from the group.

Lennie and Candy continue to daydream about their new and perfect farm and Crooks seems interested. When Curley’s wife walks in. Curley is the boss’s son and his new wife complains about their marriage to the guys, but they don’t care about her at all and tell her to leave. They tell it to her in a very respectful way, because they know she can get them fired or in Crooks case even lynched if she wanted to. Every time Curley’s wife shows up, the first thing she does is to ask where her husband is as if she was looking for him. It feels more like she is trying to flirt with the other workers on the farm instead of looking for her husband. George always tells Lennie that he should stay away from Curley’s wife because George is smart and he knows that women like her can cause a lot of trouble. 

Candy, Crooks, Curley's wife and Lennie

Blog Post #3

Friday Focus: Focus on Character 

In this Post I will describe the most important characters from the Book “Of Mice and Men”.

The greatest relationship in this novel is the friendship of George and Lennie. They have traveled together for several years and George has been taking care of Lennie for the entire time.

George is very short tempered, but he can be very loving and caring like for example with his companion Lennie. Even though George frequently complains about the life with Lennie, the commitment to protecting and caring for Lennie never weakens. Lennie and George share the dream of their own farm, where they have freedom and where Lennie can take care of the rabbits.

In my eyes, Lennie is great, he is very innocent and I tend to feel very sorry for him. For example, when he pulled out the mouse that he petted to death and George already knew what happened but Lennie still didn’t want to hand it over because he was ashamed. Or when He gets beat up by Curley and just stands there and takes the beating since George told him to not make any trouble. Lennie is just pure goodness, and the way he is so enthusiastic about the farm that He and George want to build is adorable.

Then there is a character called Candy, he is the handyman on the farm and he is very old and has only one hand, since he lost the other hand in an accident. Because of his age, Candy is very worried about losing the job at the farm, he thinks he is worthless now. It did not help his fear that another worker called Carson insists to let him kill Candys dog because he is old and smelly. This just reminds Candy of his own fate when he is useless.

These characters are the most important and the ones that have made the most impact on me while reading. These 3 characters also have the dream of the farm in common. Candy offered George and Lennie that he could spend his savings on this farm if they let him live there with them. Now George and Lennie only want to work for another couple of weeks until they can afford the farm.

Candy, George, Lennie

Blog Post #2 

This week in reading 💃

Hey again, time to sum up this weeks reading in a couple short paragraphs. So this week I started reading the book “Of Mice and Men” and I have got to meet the main characters in the book, George and Lennie. George is described as small, wiry and sharp featured while his companion, Lennie, is large and awkward. George and Lennie came with a bus to get to a farm that they will work on, it definitely sounds like they are migrant workers. Lennie seems to be mentally disabled, because he had to ask his friend George where they are going. George had to remind him impatiently about their journey over the last couple of days. I also found out that Lennie has a fascination of soft things, when he holds a mouse in his hand that he unfortunately petted to death… pour thing I guess. Lennie used to get soft things to pet from his aunt Clara, and since he doesn’t know his own strength, he has the habit to unintentionally “break” small things. At the end of the first chapter, the guys decide to sleep outside as the ranch is still about a mile away.

Looking back at the opening pages of the book, I have to say its really described beautiful and also peaceful. Almost like in “Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck, the reader gets put right into the story, and I would compare this to Steinbecks description of the Route 66 in “Grapes of Wrath”. Even though I might be too early in the book to judge this, I would say that Steinbeck creates this idyllic scene in the beginning to create a background for the friendship between George and Lennie. Their friendship already feels very strong even though George is pretty much taking care of Lennie the entire time. The dialogue between the two men are also very interesting… the language they used was the first impression of George and Lennie and the first sign that they are uneducated migrant workers.

The cover of the edition that I am reading is a picture of a cornfield with a very dark sky above it. I don’t know how I am supposed to interpret this, but as of right now I think there will be some kind of event at the new farm they will work on, that will bring a dark twist to the book.

Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck  (Cappelen Damm edition)

Blog Post #1 

Focus on Author

John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California on Feb. 27, 1902. After reading his Wikipedia page on his early life, he sounds like a person who always knew what he wanted in life but probably just wasn’t ready until his first book was published in 1929. John dropped out of Stanford University, and decided to live in New York where he found work as a construction worker and Newspaper reporter. He never managed to get his work published in NY, and scurried back to California, here he now worked as a caretaker in Lake Tahoe, things were going better and not only did he publish his first book, Cup of Gold (1929), he also met his first wife Carol Henning.

“According to biography.com, Of mice and Men (1937) is supposed to be a work by John with a more serious tone to it”. So I am not expecting a lot of laughter while reading.

Anyways, John’s most ambitious novel of all time is The Grapes of Wrath (1939), which we have looked at in class, where he talks about a family leaving Oklahoma during the depression, looking for the Promised Land (California). This book actually earned Steinbeck the Pulitzer prize, and in 1962 John received the Nobel Prize for Literature for his “realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception"

I think it is always interesting to read about people who know exactly what they want in life, just like John, who already knew at the age of 14 that he wanted to be an author. John also experienced World War 1 and 2, which is always crazy to think about for our generation!

I definitely feel more excited reading Of mice and men, now that I know more about the Author. I think the author’s background often plays a big role for how to interpret a book and for the understanding of it. John Steinbeck was a writer during the great depression, which reflected on some of the books he wrote.

Hei, ja jeg kan lese... og ja jeg fikk "Of Mice and Men" :)

Helluuu,

In this blog, I will summarize and analyze the book "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck :)

So just lay back and enjoy the show over the next 4 weeks 😎