Mice and Men quotes Flashcards
“An’ live off the fatta the lan”
Lennie
Symbolism: the American dream and hope
“I got you to look after me”
Lennie
Direct speech: the purity of their friendship
“Tell me like you done before”
Lennie
Repetition: Lennie emotional dependency on George
“I didn’t mean no harm”
Lennie
Irony:his innocence makes him dangerous
“We got a future”
George
Motif: sets him and Lennie apart from other workers
“Guys like us… are the loneliest guys in the world”
George
Superlative: highlights the emotional cost of the itinerant lifestyle
“We travel together”
George
Carthariss: how unique George and Lennie are
“Lennie’s strong and quick and Lennie don’t know no rules”
George
Foreshadowing: creates tension, Lennies strength is dangerous
“I coulda made somethin of myself”
Curleys wife
Truncated synapse: speaks in a regretful language revealing a lost dream
“They left all the weak ones here”
Curleys wife
Irony: mocks the men but ironically she is one of them
“I could get you strung up on a tree”
Curleys wife
Racial power: a chilling reminder of violence and how she has power over crooks
“Nobody never gets to heaven and nobody gets no land”
Crooks
Metaphor: undermines the dream and says it’s impossible
“A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody”
Crooks
Hyperbole: emphasises the physiological damage of isolation
“I can’t play because I’m black”
Crooks
Exclusion: shows how racism shapes the daily life on the ranch
“Maybe ever’body in the whole dam world is scared of each other”
Slim
Hyperbole: distrust is a fundamental part of human nature
“You hadda, George”
Slim
Empathy: offers George relief
“They’ll can me purty soon”
Candy
Foreshadowing: candy knows he is seen as disposable
“A guy on a ranch don’t never listen”
Candy
Alienation: no one really cares about the ranch workers
“You seen what they done to my dog?”
Candy
Parallelism: shows that Candy is scared of meeting the same end as Lennie and being discarded
“That dog ain’t no good to himself”
Carlson
Symbolism:uses the dog as a symbol for how society teats the weak
