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Narrative Techniques In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

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Of Mice And Men

John Steinbeck’s novella ‘Of Mice and Men’ published in the 1930’s employs carefully considered narrative techniques that effectively inject sympathy within the reader. The chain of events are foreshadowed through speech, Death and Lennie Small. Curlys Wife soon becomes the instrument who destroys the dream. Steinbeck demonstrates this through various techniques including of foreshadowing, realism, symbolism, circular structure, significance of the title and setting.

One of the predominant themes that govern the story and characters in the book is friendship, "Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world” Lennie And George are very lucky to have each other, although they are rather different to one another, …show more content…

It does this through an emphasis on dialogue rather than description, rapid changes of scenes and lack of transitions. To set the scene of 1930s life, Steinbeck uses the concept of social realism when he evokes the idea that the two protagonists are destined to crash from the very beginning. Steinbeck ensures that his characters are believable and are shown as is so that the reader can connect and relate with each protagonist. There is a much deeper meaning to the setting of mice and men; The Great Depression and poor men desperately looking for work.
Steinbeck describes natural settings to create a mood and atmosphere for the reader, also emphasising themes such as loneliness and instability.
Steinbeck uses Colloquial Language and slang to convey characterisation and represent the way that men living in this time really would have spoken, For example, while George explains that he sticks with Lennie because "you get used to goin ' around with a guy an ' you can 't get rid of him," what he means is that their friendship is the only thing he 's ever really had to hold on to, this also reflects back to the theme of

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