Robert Burns once said: “The best laid schemes of Mice and Men oft go awry, And leave us nothing but grief and pain, For promised joy!” John Steinbeck titled his book after this poem, and created an allegory in doing so. An allegory is a work where the characters are symbols or ideas. An allegorical novel has a group of such characters interconnected to suggest a moral theme. Of Mice and Men is an allegorical novel because each character within the book suggests a different societal standpoint during the Great Depression era. Each character has a scheme- a dream- that ends in “nothing but grief and pain” because of their situations. In Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck uses allegorical characters to show human limitations and the restrictions they place on each character’s American Dream; George is an allegory for the common man; Lennie is an allegory for mental disability; Curley’s wife is an allegory for gender inequality (a type of …show more content…
Ain’t nothing left for him. Can’t eat, can’t see, can’t even walk without hurtin’.”
“Le’s get it over with,”
“ He was a jerkline skinner, the prince of the ranch, capable of driving ten, sixteen, even twenty mules with a single line to the leaders. He was capable of killing a fly on the wheeler’s butt with a bull whip without touching the mule. There was a gravity in his manner and a quiet so profound that all talk stopped when he spoke. His authority was so great that his word was taken on any subject, be it politics or love.” Godlike eyes “Well . . . . tell you what. Curley’s like a lot of little guys. He hates big guys. He’s alla time picking scraps with big guys. Kind of like he’s mad at ‘em because he ain’t a big guy
Candy joined the attack with joy. “Glove fulla vaseline,” he said disgustedly.
“ “If he tangles with you, Lennie, we’re gonna get the can. Don’t make no mistake about that. He’s the boss’s