“Of Mice and Men”

Social Injustice Essay

You will be …

• Learning how to deconstruct an exam question.

• How to plan an answer for an exam question, in this case on theme in “Of Mice and Men.”

Question

• Choose a prose work of fiction or non-fiction, which deals with an important human issue: for example injustice, or poverty, or scientific discovery, or religious belief, or any other issue which you regard as important.

• Identify and explain what the issue is and go on to describe the ways in which the writer has made the work thought provoking.

Important issue - Social Injustice

• What does this mean?• Social injustice is when groups or individuals in

society are excluded or victimised due to something about them that others either ignore or refuse to accept. For example you may argue that a society where people are victimised because they are asylum seekers is unjust. Likewise, you may feel that a society where people sleep outside in winter while others have several houses is unjust. This is an extreme example but it illustrates the point.

Social Injustice in “Of Mice and Men.”

• Setting during Great Depression -!930s America.

• Machines taking over work of men

• Itinerant workers – their conditions

Why is it thought provoking?What has it made us think about?

• This social exclusion, being on the margins of society leads to these people being lonely and it fuels their need to have a dream of a different life.

• Lennie

• Candy

• Crooks

• Curley’s wife.

Lennie

Candy

Crooks

Curley’s Wife.

We are…

• Revising the format of introductions

• Revising how to plan sections of an essay.

Previous Targets

• Read over the essay you wrote on “The Merchant of Venice”

• Do this carefully – you want to learn from this.

• What are your strengths?

• What are your targets for this time?

Introductions

• You will be shown four introductions to the essay on social injustice.

• Discuss which introduction is the most successful and explain why.

• 8 minutes

Intro. 1“Of Mice and Men is a book about loneliness set in 1930s America. It is about two itinerant workers, George and Lennie, who travel together. George looks after Lennie because Lennie has learning disabilities. Lennie is very strong and likes to touch soft things. Lennie and George have to leave Weed because Lennie is falsely accused of attacking a young girl. When they get to the farm, Lennie is given a puppy and kills it. He then accidentally kills Curley’s wife. In the end George has to shoot Lennie so as to prevent Curley shooting Lennie and making him suffer. In this short novel, Steinbeck, use setting and theme to deal with the theme of loneliness.

Intro. 2

“Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck is a story about two ranch workers, George and Lennie who go to a new ranch to work. Steinbeck raises the issue of loneliness in his book through the description of setting and the dialogue between characters.

Intro. 3“Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck is a book that focuses on loneliness and the need for a dream. It is set over three days and is about two ranch workers, George and Lennie, who move to a new ranch. Many of the characters face social injustice and are lonely for a number of reasons. Crooks, who is a black stable buck is the victim of harsh racism; Candy, an old worker, is victimised because of his age and the fact that he has a hand disability. Curley’s wife is a woman living in a male dominated society and Lennie, one of the main characters, has learning disabilities. Steinbeck has made his work thought provoking and shown loneliness through setting and characterisation.

Intro. 4“Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck is a novel in which the theme of loneliness is very important. The novel follows two itinerant workers starting at a new ranch, George and Lennie. There they meet the other main characters in the book, Curley’s wife, Candy and Crooks. Lennie kills Curley’s wife by mistake and is shot by his friend George at the end. The writer illustrates the different cases of loneliness effectively through characterisation and setting.

Main Section of an Essay

Point – topic sentence, using linking word and referring to question

Evidence - Context of quotation/quotation/paraphrase

Analysis – an explanation of how your evidnce helps you to understand the charcters or themes more fully (in relation to the question)

Response – ensuring that there is a connection between what you have written and what you have been asked.

Comment on the following example: Choose a prose work of fiction or non-fiction, which deals with an important human

issue: for example injustice, or poverty, or scientific discovery, or religious belief, or any other issue which you regard as important.

Identify and explain what the issue is and go on to describe the ways in which the writer has made the work thought provoking.

To continue the idea of loneliness, we see the effects of being lonely on the main characters. This is shown with one of the main characters in the book, Lennie. He does not understand the things that the other workers do and this is shown when he hurts Curley: “ the next minute, Curley was flopped like a fish on a line.”This shows us how being lonely can anger some men and start fights. Lennie doesn’t understand his own strength and only hurts Curley when his companion George tells him to. This tells us that he relies so much on George and wouldn’t know what to do without him. Secondly, Lennie’s strength again gets the better of him when he kills the puppy: “Why’d you gotta get killed?”Lennie is clearly distraught and again doesn’t understand how much he can hurt people or animals when he is angry.

Think about the following:Use of linking wordsTopic sentence referring to questionContextDisplaying quotationsKnowledge of quotationsRelevance of quotations to the question asked.

Developing an Answer.

This is the part of the essay which can be difficult; this is when you explain how the quotation you have chosen answers the question. Comment on eachof the examples below.

Thirdly, Curley’s wife is another character who is very lonely in the novel. This is demonstrated when she says:

“Think I don’t like to talk to someone ever’ once in a while?”

This shows that Curley’s wife is lonely and has no one to talk to but her husband Curley. This makes me feel sorry for her, as she has nobody to talk to.

Thirdly, Curley’s wife is another character who is very lonely in the novel. Curley’s wife is not even given a name by Steinbeck; this shows how unimportant she is in the very macho setting of the farm. The men regard Curley’s wife as “jail-bait” and a “tramp “, simply because she wears make up and tries to talk to them. We can see that Curley’s wife might be very lonely in a place like this and feel sympathetic towards her. Furthermore, Curley’s wife is left alone with Candy, Lennie and Crooks while all the men go into town. When she talks to them, they try to ignore her: “Think I don’t like to talk to someone ever’ once in a while?” We can understand from this what her life is like: she has no one at all to talk to; her husband ignores her and there are no other women on the ranch. Curley’s wife is a very young woman who likes dancing, clothes and dreams of being in films. Living on the ranch must be a very lonely for her and I feel very sympathetic, as she is so isolated.Curley’s wife’s loneliness causes her death because she talks to Lennie and invites him to stroke her hair, not realising Lennie’s strength. Just before she dies she speaks to Lennie and Steinbeck writes: “And then her words came out in a passion of communication, as though she hurried before her listener could be taken away.”The word “passion” shows how desperate she is to talk to someone and the fact that she is scared her listener will leave shows that she never gets to speak to anyone. I felt very sad at this point in the novel, as Curley’s wife is clearly desperately lonely. Steinbeck very effectively demonstrates the destructiveness of loneliness through the character of Curley’s wife.