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Gender Roles In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

773 Words4 Pages

When life used to rely on the strong, men were genetically dominant over women, but now life relies on the intelligent and innovative. Although anyone can be intelligent, there are significantly fewer women than men who have power in the world. The book Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck shows the consequences of not questioning traditional gender roles. There are also people who try to fight back against the traditional gender roles like Emma Watson and her speech known as The He for She speech as well as Chimamanda Adichie’s book, We Should all be Feminists. There are many dangerous occurrences that will happen if gender stereotypes are not questioned because it promotes women inferiority compared to men, which will cause men to have more …show more content…

Since men set the expectations for women very high, it forces women to want to become perfect. To do so, women have given up many things they want to do. In Emma Watson’s speech, she states, “When at 15 my girlfriends started dropping out of their sports teams because they didn’t want to appear ‘muscly’”(Watson 1). There are many consequences for women because they need to sacrifice many things they like to do just to appear perfect to men. Similarly, Curley’s wife changes the way she looks because of men. In Of Mice and Men it states, “She wore her bright cotton dress and the mules with red ostrich feathers”(Steinbeck 84). Curley’s wife wears clothing not suited for a farm for a reason. She wears these types of clothing because it is the only type of clothing that will make men notice her. Although Curley’s wife is lucky because she was able to be pretty, others might not be able to reach which can lead to people wanting to reach perfection at any costs, even if it hurts them in the process. Overall, women should not have to change themselves for men to notice them. Men should like women for who they are and not for how they

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Archetypes are a manifestation of how our minds envision the roles of characters, these characters come in the form of the hero, villain, temptress, damsel, monster, and mentor. In the book Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, we follow the story of two men who struggle to pull through to survive horrible times, on their journey they come across other characters that fulfill the roles of the archetypes. The archetype in discussion is the villain archetype which is the evildoer of a story usually a person who commits a crime against society or against a couple of people. One character in particular that fills the archetype of the villain is Curley, he has an aura of evil that resonates from his attitude and his actions, which triggers people

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Archetypes In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

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The characters in “Of Mice and Men” have memorable personalities that we all can relate to due to their set archetypes. John Steinbeck uses these common and generalized in order to have the readers relate more to his characters. This allows the reader to experience the story and feelings of the characters much better and lets the reader to connect to the character’s feelings, or force the reader to form opinions that aligns with those of the main protagonist(s). In “Of Mice of Men”, readers are initially introduced to Curley’s Wife with words such as “tart”, and having “the eye”. Which, even if readers do not know what that means, it may be inferred through diction that she is overly flirty, or a “tramp”.

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Discrimination Present In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

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Discrimination Present in Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck was born at the beginning of the twentieth century and experienced the turning point of many eras that are evidenced throughout his writings. Steinbeck lived through the strong economic years during World War I, the dirt poor years of the Great Depression, and even saw the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s; all of his dreams for these decades are evidenced in his works, more specifically, Of Mice and Men. Of Mice and Men is set in the 1920’s in the Salinas Valley of California. Other writers, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, char-acterize the 1920’s as a fun decade with a booming economy filled with men rising from rags to riches, but Steinbeck shows how life was for men

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Archetypes are a manifestation of how our minds envision the roles of characters, these characters come in the form of the hero, villain, temptress, damsel, monster, and mentor. In the book Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, we follow the story of two men who struggle to pull through, on their journey they come across other characters that fulfill the roles of the archetypes. One character in particular that fills the archetype of the villain is Curley. Curley has an aura of evil that resonates from his attitude and his actions, which triggers people to act defensively around him for self-preservation.

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Of Mice and Men is John Steinbeck’s most successful early novel containing elements of social criticism shaped by this real life experience. Steinbeck drew his inspiration for the work from his experience living and working as a “bindlestiff” during the 1920’s. Instead of graduating from Stanford University, Steinbeck chose to support himself through manual labour whilst writing. His experience amongst the working classes in California lent authenticity to his depiction of the lives of the workers - who are the central characters of this novel; and the social issues that ensue. To further emphasize the loneliness of the itinerant worker Steinbeck then decides to set the novel near Soledad, California, a town name that means “Solitude” in Spanish.

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