A Comparison Of John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

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Replacing classic novels with more contemporary ones will be beneficial in English Class because of the usage of language. In Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck uses an abundant amount of swearing, mostly by the characters. Out of twenty reviews on commonsensemedia.org, a review site where teens get to put in input about various books, eighteen of them warned future readers of there being too much profanity. It was just the culture back then but is it really what we want to be teaching in schools, that characters that make great decisions can also swear up a storm? Newer books are able to filter out much of this foul language with the use of many different editorial processes and critical responses. Also, many classic novels can use a vocabulary …show more content…

When reading a classic novel, a reader in today’s society often doesn’t understand the thoughts and actions of a character right away. One classic example of this in Of Mice and Men is how the men at the ranch play horseshoes in their free time. Most people today don’t realize how back in the Great Depression, this activity isn’t as much of a novelty as it is today. Most teenagers have only played horseshoes a few times in their lives so that drives a wedge between the relatability between them and the characters at that particular moment. Also, teenagers are enjoying to read more contemporary novels more than the classics. The last thing that a student wants to hear in English class in today’s society that the next unit is going to be based upon a Shakespeare novel. This new task requires the reader to comprehend very confusing language and keep in mind a whole new context for the setting of the plot. With all of this going on inside of their heads, it is really hard to squeeze any sort of enjoyment into reading this story. This isn’t the case with more contemporary novels, though. In Duaa Eldeib’s article on this debate, English teacher David Knudson said that after introducing more contemporary stories into English curriculum that “all of a sudden, one of [his] biggest problems is trying to figure out what to do with kids who are 100 ages ahead or have finished the book a week after [they] started it.” This just shows that with contemporary novels, teens are able to enjoy the story more and are now more likely to draw something from it, both plot events and thematic