Dehumanization In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

Analytical Paragraph Assignment

Of Mice and Men provides us with plenty examples of dehumanization that guide us to conclusions, or insights or feelings of dehumanization. Some examples of this is the dehumanization of Lennie, Crooks and Curley’s wife. Of Mice and Men perfects the traits of dehumanization of Lennie by relating him to a number of animals like the horse. Steinbeck dehumanizes Lennie by comparing him to a horse when George says, “His huge companionship dropped his baskets and flung himself down and drank from the surface of the green pool; drank with long gulps, snorting into the water like a horse” (Steinbeck, 2). Furthermore, Steinbeck helps us, by dehumanizing Crooks, living in a barn, to animals, to visualize how poorly Crooks is treated. To prove this, Crook says, “ ‘Cause I’m black.

They say I stink. Well, I tell you, you all of you stink to me” (Steinbeck, 65) and “A guy needs someone—to be near him, a guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody. Don’t make no difference who the guy is, long’s he’s with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets to lonely an’ he gets sick“(Steinbeck, 69), stating that he’s has no rights or freedom and excluded from every event and group. Finally, Steinbeck dehumanizes Curley by the negative criticism that always pursues her and her loss of identity when accompanying someone or something. This is why she is always commonly known as “Curley’s Wife”, proving that she is an unimportant and insignificant character in this book. Plus, everybody in the book says that Curley’s wife causes trouble for everyone; as George says, “She’s a jail bait all set on the trigger,” (Steinbeck, 49) and is constantly getting blame for all that goes wrong in Soledad; as Candy says, You God damn tramp. You done it, di’n’t you? I s’pose you’re glad. Everybody knowed you’d mess things up. You ain’t no good now, you lousy tart, “ (Steinbeck, 91) which means Steinbeck dehumanizes her because even when she’s dead, people still don’t