Tiff’s Blog

Symbol~ Something that stands for or represents something greater than itself.

” Your Aunt Clara give you a rubber mouse and you wouldn’t have nothing to do with it.” (10)

I think that this shows that the mice are a symbol of something to Lennie. I don’t even think that just the rubber mouse is the symbol, but even the mice that he has killed. In an odd way I think it represents how small Lennie’s mind is. He likes the small cute and cuddly things that compare with his mind, not compared to the enormous size of his body.

I really think Steinbeck uses this to make you think about the book. It could also be the reason why he named it “Of Mice and Men”

Metaphor~A comparison where you call one thing something it is not.

” He stood crying, his fist lost in Lennie’s paw.” (64)

This line is a great way to show a metaphor. It kind of explains how strong Lennie really is. He has the paw of some big fierce animal, even if he doesn’t know that he is doing with it.

I think that this was added to the book to show how strong Lennie really is. It is supposed to give us more of an image of how Lennie truely is.

Foreshadowing~The use of clues to suggest events that have yet to occur.

“Well let him be handy,” said George. “He don’t have to take after Lennie. Lennie didn’t do nothing to him. What’s he got against Lennie?”

This is a gread exapmle of foreshadowing because it tells you that something is going to happen between Lennie and Curley.

I think this was added to the book so everyond had something to ponder on when they predict the book.

Flat Character~We see only one side, or trait, of these characters

“If I catch any one man, and he’s along, I get along fine withe him. but just let two of the guys get together an’ you won’t talk.” (77)

I think this shows that Curley’s wife is a flat character. The only side or traight we see of her is that she likes to flirt with all of the men around the ranch. She was even flirting with the black stable buck.

This was added for the effect that Curley’s wife was up to no good and in the end she did cause all the trouble.

Dynamic Character~These characters change somehow during the story.

“Never you mind,” said Slim. ” A guy got to sometimes.”

George was a dynamic character in my eyes. He goes from being with Lennie all the time and enjoying his company even if he doesn’t admit it, but then when Lennie makes a mistake George turns his back on him.

This part shows you should always know who your friends are because you never know when they will stab you in the back, or shoot you in the back of the head.

And George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it close to the back of Lennie’s head. The hand shook violently, but his face set and his hand steadied. He pulled the trigger. (106)

Wow! That is all I can say about how this book ended. This just shocked me in every way possible, and even makes me a little angry. George and Lennie were best friends, and they were always there to balance eachtoher out. Yes I understand that what Lennie did was wrong, but death? I know that I could never ever even think about doing that to any one of my friends. 

I like to fell silk an’ velvet. Do you like to feel velvet?

Just from these two lines my earlier point on Curley’s wife was proven. She knew how Lennie was, and yet she still choose to tempt him that way. She was up to no good and personally I think she deserved what she got. She was always prancing around the guys in the bunk house. Even when she came into Crook’s bunk she was all flirty, and up to no good.

Lennie said miserable, “George wun’t go away and leave me. I know George wun’t do that.” (73)

This breaks my heart. In a way George left Lennie and its an awful situation. What Lennie did was bad too, but he doesn’t know what he does all the time, so he at least deserved to have his life and a good friend. Instead he got neither. I am just not happy at all on how the book ended it really just made me very very angry.

I have learned many things this year. Something are the good somethings are the bad, but I never regret any of it because it makes me who I am. To start all of my teachers have taught me a lot of things that I can use for my later years of education. Mrs. Rendon taught me how to solve different kind of equations, or how to graph a parabola. Mr. Farrand taught me how to balance equations, or how to make different chemicals turn different colors. Mr. Bucholz taught me who really started World War II. And you Mr. Sheehy taught me so many vocab words that I can now hold a very intelligent conversation. But its not just about the things that others teach us that counts. I had to learn a few things on my own. I learned it really does affect your grade if you don’t do your homework. If you get to behind it gets really hard to catch back up. I know now that I didn’t try my hardest, and for that I am going to have consequences. Now I won’t have my straight A’s like I had last year. On the upside of that it just makes me want to try harder next year to make sure I am doing my best. I just fell of the track for a little bit, and now I am ready to get back on. Another thing I learned who my real friends are. After going through the experience of loosing one of my best friends because she always needed me but was never there for me when I needed her, and her choosing her boyfriend over me I really learned who my true best friends are. And I plan on doing everything in my power to make our friendship work because they mean the world to me. After holding my niece Audrey I know what it feels like to hold the whole world in your hands.. She is everything and more to me. I will never forget the great time we shared in your class though. This was a very fun class where we could all just joke around and then the next second have a great discussion about a  novel we just read. Or how Nate always stole my stuff and everyone would hide it from me. This was without a doubt my favorite English 11 class and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

In chapter three the book starts to get interesting. You get a little more information about the characters and the story actually starts to go somewhere.

George spoke proudly. “Jus’ tell Lennie what to do an’ he’ll do it if it don’t take no figuring. He can’t think of nothing to do himself, but he sure can take orders.” (39)

I found this quote from the book to be very ironic in a way. Here you have George the little guys telling Lennie the big guy what to do. I guess this is a case where you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. If anyone that didn’t know either of them saw them they would probably say that Lennie is the more dominate one, but in all reality George is because Lennie does what ever he is told to do and isn’t very bright.

Why he’d do any damn thing I tol’ him. If I tol’ him to walk over a cliff, over hed go. That wasn’t so damn much fun after a while. (40)

George is saying this to Slim, someone that he has just met. Now from reading as far as I have we know that Slim is a pretty good guy. But how does George know that? I wouldn’t trust someone I just met enough to tell them that my best friend will do anything he is told. If the person was not a good and trustworthy person they could make Lennie do anything, most likely something bad.

She ain’t concealin’ nothing. I never seen nobody like her.

This is what Slim says about Curley’’s wife. This just seems to me like there are going to be problems to come with her she seems very scandalous.This presents the question in my mind.. Does Curley’s wife cause any problems with George or Lennie.

Also I really have to wonder will George and Lennie ever get their dream house?

As reading on in chapter two we are starting to get to know George and Lennie a little bit better. We see more of their actions and how they act personality wise.

George lifted his tick and looked underneath it. He leaned over and inspected the sacking closely. Immediately Lennie got up and did the same with his bed. (19)

To me this shows that Lennie does look up to George. In a way he wants to be just like him. Lennie has been around George all the time so he thinks that whatever George does or says to do is always the right way. That really makes me wonder if George ever takes this to his advantage.

The boss pointed a playful finger at Lennie. ” He ain’t much of a talker, is he?”(21)

Does the boss ask this because he gets the vibe that George is the more dominate one? Does he really wonder or care why Lennie isn’t talking? Does George not want Lennie to talk at all while they are working there? That doesn’t make any sense to me I could understand why he wouldn’t want him to at first but he should be able to as time goes on.

I don’t like nobody to get nosey.(24)

This brings me to my point from chapter one. George has to have something to hide. Yes I understand that he doesn’t want anyone to find out about the incident that happened in Weed,but is there something more?? Will they not get close to people because of George’s “fear”?

We’ll get out jus’ as soon as we can.

Why does George wanna leave their new job so fast. I think that the boss will get very angry with them if they leave soon. Then they will be on the run again. Who knows what will happen then. Can they ever stop running. I know that is what they dream about but will it ever happen?

In the beginning of the story you meet George and Lennie, they are two men that we know little about. They are described as one being short and strong and the other tall and over sized. Well we don’t know any of their past so you have to wonder if they have something to hide.

“Awright. You got that. But we’re gonna sleep here because I got a reason” (7).

What is George’s reason for sleeping in the woods? It makes it seem like he has some big secret. Maybe in a way he is trying to protect George is trying to protect Lennie from something. Or maybe he wants to be sure no one from weed is following them.

“I’d pet ‘em, and pretty soon they bit my fingers and I pinched their heads a little and then they was dead – because they was so little” (10).

This shows to me that Lennie doesn’t know his own strength. He doesn’t mean to kill the mice, but it just keeps happening. He wants to be friends with them but when the mice bite him he doesn’t know what else to do. Since he seems to have memory problems he probably can’t remember to not pinch their little heads so hard. Later in the story George tells Lennie that he will get him a dog because they are bigger then mice, and this makes Lennie really excited. I think this shows that George does really care about Lennie.

“When I think of the swell time I could have without you, I go nuts. I never get no peace” (12).

Why doesn’t George just leave Lennie then? He might feel this way but deep down you know that George really has to care for Lennie otherwise he would have left him somewhere by now. George seems very fatherly to Lennie, because he has to look out for him by making sure they have something to eat and that he stays out of trouble. Then there is the aspect of maybe its not so much that he cares about Lennie, maybe he cared about Lennie’s Aunt and had made some sort of promise to her.

I am sure there has always been a time that someone has pretended to be something or someone they are not. No matter how true to yourself you might say you are I think everyone has a time when they forget who they are.. I believe I struggled with this a little bit at the beginning of the school year. My best friend and I became friends with another girl. We were all really close over the summer before junior year. But then something happened between my too friends and they sort of had a falling out. I for some reason choose to be with the newer friend even though she was not the better one to choose. I lost touch of myself. I normally am good at choosing who my friends are and I don’t know what went wrong. Something happened where I got my head on straight and am now best friends with my original friend again. I believe that none of the girls are being true to themselves because they are lying. They know they are hurting innocent people, but they don’t seem to care. Abby is the worst I think.. She needs to find herself.

When I was younger my sister always tried to tell me what to do. My mom would always tell her she wasn’t the parent so there was no need to act like one. She would always tell me certain ways to play the games we were playing and just try to be totally controlling. She even does this with me to the day. Telling me that if I do something i’m not supposed to I will be in big trouble. I try to get the point across that she still isn’t my mom and can’t tell me what to do. It kind of reminds me of the court system in the story. If they find you doing something even the littlest bit wrong you will be accussed of being a witch and then have to be put on trial. You can’t even lift a finger wrong. Yes the punishment in the story is much more severe then the punishmet I would ever “recieve” from my sister but I think that the two situations relate to one another.

Arthur Miller was born in New York in 1915. He graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1932, but was delayed going to college due to lack of tuition money. He worked many random jobs like singing at a local radio station, or driving a truck, and he even worked as a stock clerk in an automobile parts warehouse. He was enrolled and attended the University of Michigan in 1934. During his college years he married a woman named Marry Slattery and had two kids. In 1944 towards the end of his college years one of his plays The Man Who Had All the Luck premeired, and the soon after in 1947 his play All My Sons opened on Broadway. Then in 1949 his play The Death of a Salesman made him internationally known as an outstanding playwrite and later that year he was named outstanding father of the year. Then four years later he had another premeire play called The Crucible. Soon after his wife died and he got remarried to actress Marilyn Monoroe in 1956. Not even a full year after Arthur Miller was cited for contempt of congress when he refused to give up a group of communist conspirators who were attempting to misuse American passports. His reasoning behind this was that he would not bring “exposure for exposure sake”. However the very next year the citing was reversed and his record cleared. Three years later he and Marilyn Monoroe divorced because of their differing lives and she died a year later. Soon after she died he got remarried to an Austrian photographer named Inge Morath. They wrote two books together on the status of Russia and China and they had a daughter named Rebecca who currently lives in conneticutt. Two years after she died he planned to remarried again and for the final time to a woman named  Agnes Barley whom was a 34 year old artist. He was chosen to be a delegate for Eugene McCarthy at the 1968 democratic convention a few years later, and was elected president of P.E.N. The international literacy organization in 1965. Arthur Miller remained politcally active throughout his life until he died of heart failure in his home in Roxbury Connecticut on Feb. 10, 2005. Before his death he had earned two honorary doctorate degrees one from Oxfor and the other from Harvard University. He was the first United States citizen to ever receive the Principe De Asturias prize for literature, and he also received the The Gold Medal for Drama In 1959 from the National Institue of Arts and Letters.

Centola, Steve. “The Arthur Miller Society Official Website.” The Arthur Miller Society Official Website. 2 Mar.-Apr. 2008. Stanford. 9 Apr. 2008 http://www.ibiblio.org/miller/.

 Galvin, Rachel. “Arthur Miller Biography.” 9 Apr. 2008 http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/miller/biography.html.

 Gottfried, Martin. “Arthur Miller.” Jan.-Feb. 2003. 9 Apr. 2008 <httpi.fi/amiller.htm://www.kirjasto.sc>.

Elizabeth has judged by Abigal just because she is married to John Proctor. Abigal is in “love” with John, and so she is basically just jealous of Elizabeth since she is married to John. How this may result is that Elizabeth could get hung because of Abigal judging her. I have had a situation happen like this. Names will be changed. I had a girl named Sue who I had gone to school with since freshman year. I had one class with Sue and rarely ever saw her after that. Well this year she has been around in my life a little more. She dated one of my guy friends, and her best friend dated another one. One night I got a phone call from Sue and her friend saying stupid random stuff so I just hung up the phone. How they got my number I can not be sure, but I have recently gotten another phone call from them, but instead of listening to them ramble on I just hung up the phone. They have told certain people that I hang out with that they hate me and my friend Erin. I have never spoke more than two words to either of them, and when we are around each other I try and be nice. I don’t understand why these girls hate me and my friend.. The only thing I can think of is jealousy just like Abigal had for Elizabeth.