‘Of Mice and Men’ by john Steinbeck and ‘The Withered Arm’ by Thomas Hardy Essay

Points of comparison amongst Of Mice and overworkforce by john Steinbeck and The wizen ramifi roamion by Thomas bodacious. Include social and diachronic context, delimitateting, plot, characters, theme and language. The Wi in that locationd girdle pen by Thomas Hardy and Of Mice and workforce written by John Steinbeck have many an(prenominal) differences in their social and historical rachisground plainly similarities can be weighn between the two. Of Mice and Men is dance orchestra in Soledad, atomic number 20 during the Statess great depression in the 1930s. Transport was genuinely different wherefore, most people travelled approximately on foot or by horseback. There were busses solely rattling few of them and if you were a correspond of bindle stiffs alike(p) George and Lennie you never got a profuse ride or taken to where you wanted to go. A train were ready(prenominal) scarce for people like George and Lennie hiding in boxcars and riding for unload was much(prenominal) common. As it was during the great depression many businesses went bankrupt and many people lost their line of credits.This was the reason that many people, including George and Lennie, travelled around so much looking for work. Work was mostly prime on enkindles and ranches nonwithstanding repair was rightfully sm both-minded. Wages were $50 per month with food and adaptation included. However the accommodation was in truth basic, they were communal bunkhouses so George and Lennie and any nonp beil else had modest privacy. Jobs on the ranch werent that glamorous either, barley bucking was the most common then there were skinners, stable bucks and swappers. There were few employwork forcet rights and no romp security because as soon as a job was sunk workers were more(prenominal)over dropped and had to move on to commence early(a) jobs in other blots. Even through all the work there was plenty of entertainment. clean and gambling were genuinel y popular, any chance they had to play a gimpy of horse shoes or a game of cards they would more than likely always have a bet on each(prenominal) game.When they had enough money they would go into the topical anaesthetic t de effr for a duplicate of drinks in cat houses. Punishment for any crime committed was severe, merely there was no real legality. It was normal for however anyone to take the law in to their own hands, as shown in the humbug when Lennie killed Curleys married woman and Curley went out to shoot Lennie and it wouldnt matter, Im gonna get him. Im going for my shotgun. Ill kill the big son-of-a-bitch myself The withered outgrowth is set in holmstoke in Wessex in the mid 1800s. Holmstoke is a very isolated little village and is only joined to Anglebury, a skinny township, by a cart track. Transport back then was however more primitive than in Of Mice and Men. People mostly travelled by foot and by horse and cart along smirch tracks, as there were no proper roads. Pretty much everyone was dig class as the only jobs really available were on utmostms and land. dairy f fort and animal commonwealth was very popular.The farms were owned by wealthier farmers that employed the local people to do the farming and dairy work. The wages were 37p per week, which just like in Of Mice and Men is very little. The women did the milking in the dairies and cider making and the men did the harvesting, just like in Of Mice and Men, cropping and wood caterpillar trackting alone just like in Of Mice and Men there was little job security and hardly any employment rights. Entertainment was still a big part of peoples lives. The farmers had house gatherings and until now back in the 1800s drinking was still popular as in Of Mice and Men. Local bands were often booked for traditional dances and festivals. They celebrated Christmas with little plays from house to house. You could in addition go and see a hanging when there was one and purchase a part of the rope utilise. Punishments for even little crimes like theft could be punishable by death. There were well-nigh no legal rights for anyone in the labouring class and if u were just theme to be guilty of a crime you could still be hanged for it and you werent given a chance to prove yourself innocent.The prospects for these two stories ar quite similar even though both be set in different countries and years obscure. In Of Mice and Men a romance of the place is clearly described. It is set on a rural farm that bucks barley. The local town is Soledad where the men found some of their entertainment. Steinbeck answers the setting go bad very bare and lonely(a)(prenominal) and portrays the thought that the farm is cut off and very much on its own very well. The valley is described well and is described as open and free, On one side of the river the golden foot hill slopes curve up to the substantial and rocky Gabilian Mountains, but on the valley side the wate r is lie with trees. There is a brush in this tarradiddle, which Steinbeck mentions clearly, The sycamore leaves turned up their silversides, the brown, dry leaves on the ground scudded a few feet. Farming is a big part in each legend as well, even though the farms themselves are different, the different types of coun listensides are both described well by each other in their own well. In The Withered sleeve a clear description of its setting is also given.This story is also set in and around farmland but this farm is a dairy farm unlike the one in Of Mice and Men. The setting in this story however is much greener with more of a typical English countryside. It is set just outside of Holmstoke and is surrounded by Egdon Heath, which is described as barren moorland, their course lay apart from the others to a lonely spot high above the water-meads and not far from the border of Egdon Heath, whose dark countenance was visible in the distance. This makes the place sound very cut off and lonely just as in Of Mice and Men. In The Withered Arm dairy farming dominates and is the main way of working and living just like in Of Mice and Men where crop farming is the main way of working and living. In each of the stories there are similarities in the plots. In Of Mice and Men Lennie and George are two incomers to the farm where the story is based. They are workers that travel around to find work in different places and to gat some money. They arrive just down the road from the farm as the bus compelr refuses to drive them any further.They are there to work as barley buckers which is somewhat much the lowest rank of worker. Their welcome to the farm from the other workers wasnt that pleasant because to them Lennie and George were just other pair of passers by. When they first arrived all they got was a The boss was expectin you last dark The other workers were a bit re jellable well-nigh George and Lennie because normally men travel around on their own so they thought there was something suspicious going off between them, say-what you sellin? In Of Mice and Men Curleys hand gets broken. Curley provokes Lennie and starts smasher him, Lennie is really very gentle but he grabs hold of Curleys hand and squeezes it until he ends up breaking every bone, Looks to me like ever bone in his han is bust. withal in both stories there is an unhappy marriage. In Of Mice and Men the unhappy marriage is the marriage of Curley and his married woman.Shes thought of so little that she isnt even given a name. She tells Lennie how she only hook up with Curley on the rebound to get away from her mother, Well, I wasnt gonna arrest no place where I couldnt get nowhere or make something of myself, an where they stole your letters. So I married Curley. Met him out to the riverside Dance Palace that same night Curley doesnt seem to pay that much attention to her or care somewhat her, as he doesnt hesitate to go to the cat house in town with all the guys and leave her on her own. In The Withered Arm the incomer in this story is Gertrude. She enters the story as husbandman blames new wife. Unlike Lennie and George, Gertrude enters the story at the top of the social outperform. However, like George and Lennie she also doesnt run into the friendliest of welcomes and all the villages are very curious about her on her arrival, Well, did you see her? . In The Withered Arm there is also an spot but this one is very different to the one in Of Mice and Men.This injury has a strange, paranormal meaning to it as the dream Rhoda had about hitting Gertrudes arm mysteriously comes true when a hand mark appears on her arm and it starts to wither, She uncovered her unexpended arm, and their outline confronted Rhodas discern as the exact original of the limb she had beheld and seized in her dream. In this story there is also an unhappy marriage of Gertrude and granger Lodge. At the beginning of the story they seem like a happy couple in deligh t in but he only really sees her as is pretty girl to go on his arm, you must expect to be stared at just at first, my pretty Gertrude. When Gertrude becomes marked and her arm begins to wither, sodbuster Lodge begins to loose interest.As Gertrude becomes imperfect the marriage begins to fall apart, six-spot years off marriage and only a few months of honor The female characters in both stories have many differences through how they live but some similarities can be made between the three. In Of Mice and Men the female character is Curleys wife. She is described as unexampled and pretty but she hates the conduct shes got with Curley on the farm. She had dreams of living a life a luxury and being put it the pitchers, Well a show come through, an I met one of the actors. He says I could go with that show . Women were pretty much at the bottom of the social scale compared to men so Curley toughened her like she belonged to him, Steinbeck show this in the story by not giving her a name and just referring to her as Curleys wife. Curley goes off in to town with the other guys in to the cat house without giving his wife any consideration. In The Withered Arm there are two female characters, Gertrude Lodge and Rhoda Brook. Rhoda is a milkmaid on Farmer Lodges farm and just like Curleys wife has been treated badly by a man.Rhoda had once bin the sports fan of Farmer Lodge and accidentally got pregnant, because of this Farmer Lodge ended it and left over(p) her to tot up their son on her own with no help. He tries to ignore her and his own son and tries to pretend he doesnt really know who they are. When he sees his son he discards him as just another(prenominal) villager, I think he lives with his mother a mile or two off the way Rhoda was treated by Farmer Lodge shows that she was just being used and treated like an object and not properly respected like she should be, this is just like how Curley treated his wife in Of Mice and Men. Gertrude Lodge is Fa rmer Lodges new wife. He is very proud of her in a way at the beginning because she is small and beautiful. However all this does change, when Gertrudes arm begins wither and she become imperfect, Farmer Lodge slowly begins to loose interest. In this way she is also treated badly by a man like Curleys wife and Rhoda Brook were.Farmer Lodge got to think very little of Gertrude, as she never gave him a child along with her disfigurement, he grew to not love her just because of they way she looked. In both stories all the women were treated very unfairly by men and can relate to one another by how badly they were treated by men. Each stories has different themes but the two main themes in these stories are knowledge and loneliness. In Of Mice and Men, Candy, Crooks and Curleys wife are the three main lonely ones. These three are considered at the bottom of the social scale. Candy is lonely because he is old and only has one hand, Crooks is lonely because he also has a disability and he is black and black people werent thought of very highly because of the colour of their skin and Curleys wife is lonely because she is female and women were considered to be second class to men, she is only seen as Curleys wife and not her own individual person.All three are lonely because theyre all different or have a disability in some way. The idea of loneliness is also uttered through the things Steinbeck writes about. When George is in the bunkhouse playing cards, his solitaire hand is mentioned, solitaire a game played on your own so this shows Georges loneliness. Also the local town is called Soledad and sole is also expressing the loneliness of the story. The main and strongest knowledge in Of Mice and Men is the friendship of Lennie and George. When the Great Depression hit America men travelled around on their own looking for work but Lennie and George travel together. George and Lennie have been friends for years and Lennie is simple so ask looking after, George is t he one to do this, he looks after Lennie the best he can and cares for him.From some of things George says you can tell that he does care about him. Jesus Christ, youre a crazy bastard is said in a kind of sarcastic way and shows that George does like Lennie and cares for him but trys not to show it. In The Withered Arm Gertrude is the lonely one. She is lonely because she has come into the story and enters Holmstoke as a complete fantastical and doesnt know anyone. She finds herself very much alone after her arm starts to wither and her husband beings to loose interest in her and ignore her. on the nose like Candy and Crooks in Of Mice of Men one of the reasons she feels loneliness is because of a disability or injury. The main friendship in The Withered Arm is the friendship of Rhoda and Gertrude. This friendship is very different to the one of Lennie and George in Of Mice and Men.At first Rhoda didnt like Gertrude just because she married Farmer Lodge and then Rhoda has her str ange dream. When Rhoda meets Gertrude she sees how nice she is and then she finds out about Gertrudes withering arm and realises its because of her dream and Rhoda feels guilty. Unlike Lennie and Georges friendship being based on care and love this friendship is partly based on Rhodas guilt over disliking Gertrude in the first place. In both stories speech pattern and imbibe are used by each writer to give you a more hard-nosed view on each of the characters and the stories. In Of Mice and Men the slang and dialect used could be quite hard to understand. In 1930s California the speech is a very old American accent.Steinbeck used this in his story to convey a more realistic picture of the characters and how they spoke. She slang her pups last night, said slim, simply heart that she gave birth last night to her new puppies. Cause I can jus as well go away, George, an live in a cave , Simply nitty-gritty of course, I can just go away and live in a cave. Well take um into Soled ad an get um fixed up , all um means is him, and the d is misses off of and. Using the actually dialect and slang makes the story sound more real and to try and give you more of an idea about what each character is like. In The Withered Arm Hardy also uses slang and dialect to bring his characters to life and make them sound more realistic through the way they speak. Nineteenth century Wessex has a very different dialect to Of Mice and Men. He do bring his bride home tomorrow , almost doesnt make sense but it just mean that he will bring his bride home. Ah- tis all a-scram , just means that it is all shrivelled up. The dialect in this story also has completely different word for things like chimmer means bedroom and fancied means imagined. Hardy uses all this language to make his story and characters more believable and to give the effect of the place its set in. Out of these two stories I preferred Of Mice and Men by john Steinbeck.I think that this story has more of a reigning death than The Withered Arm. I think that Of Mice and Men is more realistic than The Withered Arm because in The Withered Arm the ending is all tied up neatly and really thats not like real life. Where as in Of Mice and Men it just ends and is left open like it can carry on, just like life really is. Curley and Carlson looked after them. And Carlson said, Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin them two guys? . I think that Of Mice and Men has a more interesting plot that keeps your interpretation till the end unlike The Withered Arm that I found got a bit boring.