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Of Mice And Men Mood Analysis

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“Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck is able to use imagery and diction to change the mood throughout the story.The story is about two friends, George and Lennie, and how travel the area being migrant workers trying to find jobs. Throughout the book they go through their ups and downs. They later figure out their problems. In the beginning of the book the mood is calm and laid back but near the end it is more gloomy, even though in the same setting. But how did he use diction and imagery to change the mood?
In the beginning of the story Steinbeck sets the mood of calmness via the use of imagery.
He describes his surroundings by saying there are “Mottled,white,recumbent leaves”(3) and he later explains there are “willows fresh”(3). Both these show that there is a calm mood in the passage because it describes all the plants around like time is slow and he is taking in as much detail as he can around him. Farther down in the same paragraph he mentions some animals,such as “Rabbits come out of the brush and sit on the sand in the evening, and the damp flats are covered with the night tracks of ‘coons,and with the split-wedge tracks of deer that come to …show more content…

The mood is gloomy near the end because when he says “A silent head and beak lanced down and plucked it out by the head, and the beak swallowed the little snake while its tail waved frantically”(97). This represents the death of Curley's wife. Later in another paragraph he says “The heron stood in the shallows, motionless and waiting”(97). This shows that the story is slow and gloomy because he isn't using much description in the quote that I pulled from the book. Steinbeck is able to use the same setting and create to very different moods in the book “Of Mice and Men”.In the beginning of the book the mood in calm but near the end it is gloomy. This is done through diction and

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