Journal Number Four

I finally finished "Of Mice and Men," and boy does the ending take an unexpected twist! Lennie is a good-spirited man with the mind of a little kid. He doesn't mean for any harm to come to anyone. However, that is exactly what happens when he starts petting Curley's wife's soft hair, he liked petting it so much though that he pulled on it. Curley's wife started screaming, so Lennie covered her mouth, and started to shake her. Lennie ended up breaking her neck, and she died shortly after. Lennie knew that now, George wouldn't let him tend to the rabbits at the farm that they were going to own. Lennie was so scared that he ran off into the brush like George told him to earlier. George came across the body not long after and knew that Lennie had done it. Candy went to inform the boys, and Curley started off to look for Lennie to kill him. Then, George knew that if Lennie was going to die, he would be the one to kill him. So rather than a bunch of angry men lynching him, George finds him, reassures him, and peacefully shoots him in the back of the head.

The idea of George, Lennie, and Candy owning their own farm, was such a far off dream that even when George suggested it, he knew that it would never happen. This was the American Dream that a lot of people had during the Great Depression, to make enough money to make something of themselves. My senior study question, has to do with comparing the Great Depression of the 1930's; the family life, the workforce, and our current recession in 2011, having to deal with those same issues. How are they the same? How are they different? How have they grown and changed? These issues were relevant then, and ironically, are still relevant now. These issues are prominent in the book "Of Mice and Men." I am going to try to answer these questions in my study. I am also going to study how George, Lennie, and laborers in general of the 1930's have to do with these issues. These laborers were searching for a dream, that was far off, but sometimes, it was the only thing that kept them going.