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Imagery
Steinbeck begins with the winding Salinas River and describes the well-beaten path, perhaps in an echo of the journey of life.
Animal metaphors are used to describe characters. In the first scene Lennie is compared to a terrier and a bear.
Lennie petting the mouse is a clear warning about how dangerous Lennie can be
Imagery is used to develop characterisation - Candy's dog is old and physically infirm, with nothing to look forward to except death.
Curley keeps a glove on one hand full of vaseline to improve his sexual performance - he is also a talented boxer - This is an example of a physical image to help describe the mentality of the character.
Irony & Humour
Irony is used in language when the opposite of what is really meant is said, or when something turns out in the opposite way to that which is intended.
There are several examples of irony when what actually happens, rather than what is said, is opposite to that which is intended.
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Imagery is the use of words to create pictures, or images, in the reader's mind. Imagery makes what is being said more effective, can make an idea more powerful or help create a mood. Although Of Mice and Men is written in simple language with an economy of style, Steinbeck uses images as symbols of things in life.
Of Mice and Men is written in the third person, as if the writer is a fly on the wall. This makes the writer invisible. The characters are usually only briefly described physically, and demonstrate their inner thoughts by their speech and actions. We are given a private peek into someone's thoughts only once. Lennie's hallucinations - which technique most accurately reflects real life?
Steinbeck blends a descriptive style with a dramatic style which is more often found in plays than novels. His use of description shows most clearly in the first and last scenes when he talks of nature and the natural world.
These descriptions are not essential to the development of the story, whereas all events at the ranch are written economically and with little description. Everything mentioned there has a purpose in developing or echoing a theme or character trait that warns of doom
The dramatic style that Steinbeck ontended from the outset, consists of dialogue which is mainly short exchanges, and it is usually the conversations that develop the story. There are only two main locations, little need for props, only a handful of characters and plenty of suggestions about how to use light to create symbolic effect - all factors which lend themselves to theatre production.
Language
Use of light
It is significant that Steinbeck often refers to light and dark, or sunshine and shadow as symbols and to create atmosphere.
As the story moves to its tragic conclusion... 'the light climbed on out of the valley. Soon only the topmost ridges were in the sun.' Both Lennnie and Curley's wife may be happier in death than in life and this is symbolic of their souls escaping to a possible better life.
Crooks's room reflect the miserable, drab lives of the ranch hands.
As Lennie's captors advance on him and his fate is sealed: 'already the sun had left the valley to go climbing up the slopes of the Gabilan mountains.'
The first time we see Curley's wife in the story, both George and Lennie look up to see that the 'rectangle of sunshine in the doorway was cut off.' This chillingly foreshadows the way Curley's wife is the eventual cause of Lennie's death, and the end of the dream.
Just before Curley's wife dies, 'the light was lifting as the sun went down, and the sun-streaks climbed the wall...' After she dies 'the sun-streaks are high on the wall.'
Structure
Scene 1
Scene 2
Scene 6
Structure refers to the framework for piecing the parts of the work together. This short book (novella) has a very tight and defined structure in a cyclical form. The action begins and ends at the same place where the issues raised within the friendship between George and Lennie are introduced and later reach a conclusion. How they arrive at this is explained in the four scenes that form the four central elements of the story.
Scene 5
Scene 3
Scene 4