Of Mice And Men Flashcards
American stuff
James Truslow Adams described it as “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”
‘Something that Happened’ the title ‘Of Mice and Men’ comes from Robert
Burns’ poem ‘To a Mouse’.
The original lines are:
The best-laid schemes o’ mice and men
Gang aft agley (often go wrong)
An’ lea’e us naught (leave us nothing) but grief an’ pain
For promised joy.
George and Lennie
“You . . . . an’ me. Ever’body gonna be nice to you. Ain’t gonna be no more trouble. Nobody gonna hurt nobody nor steal from ‘em.”
Hes my cousin
“Come on, George. Me an’ you’ll go in an’ get a drink.” George let himself be helped to his feet. “Yeah, a drink.” Slim said, “You hadda, George. I swear you hadda. Come on with me.” He led George into the entrance of the trail and up toward the highway. Curley and Carlson looked after them. And Carlson said, “Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin’ them two guys?”
“he dabbled his big paw in the water”
and he walked heavily like a bear drags his paws. His arms did not swing at his sides, but hung loosely.’
“Lennie covered his face with huge paws and bleated with terror.
Sure we will,’ George said sleepily. “Red and blue and green rabbits, Lennie. Million of ‘em
“For the rabbits” “and I get to tend the rabbits.”
“You seen what they done to my dog tonight? They says he wasn’t no good to himself nor nobody else.
Candy
“You seen what they done to my dog tonight? They says he wasn’t no good to himself nor nobody else.
The old man came slowly into the room. He had his broom in his hand. And at his heels there walked a dragfooted sheepdog, gray of muzzle, and with pale, blind old eyes. The dog struggled lamely to the side of the room and lay down, grunting softly to himself and licking his grizzled, moth-eaten coat.
The old man squirmed uncomfortably. “Well—hell! I had him so long. Had him since he was a pup. I herded sheep with him.” He said proudly, “You wouldn’t think it to look at him now, but he was the best damn sheep dog I ever seen.”
“I ought to of shot that dog myself, George. I shouldn’t ought to of let no stranger shoot my dog.”
Crooks
California civil code for 1905. There were battered magazines and a few dirty books on a special shelf over his bunk. A pair of large gold-rimmed spectacles hung from a nail on the wall above his bed.
“Crooks was a proud, aloof man. He kept his distance and demanded that other people keep theirs”
“I ain’t a southern Negro,” he said “I was born right here in California”
…. . The white kids come to play at our place, an’ sometimes I went to play with them, and some of them was pretty nice.
“If I say something, why it’s just a **** sayin’ it”
Crooks’ face lighted with pleasure in his torture. “Nobody can’t tell what a guy’ll do,” he observed calmly. “Le’s say he wants to come back and can’t. S’pose he gets killed or hurt so he can’t come back.”
The stable buck went on dreamily “I remember when I was a little kid on my old man’s chicken ranch.
They was always near me, always there.”
“ every damn one of ‘em’s got a little piece of land in his head. An’ never a ** one of ‘em ever gets it. Just like heaven[…]Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head. “
He hesitated. “ . . . . If you . . . . guys would want a hand to work for nothing—just his keep, why I’d come an’ lend a han
“An’ what am I doin’? Standin’ here talkin’ to a bunch of bindle stiffs - a **** an’ a dum-dum and a lousy ol’ sheep - an’ likin’ it because they ain’t nobody else”
“Crooks had retired into the terrible protective dignity of the Negro”
“cause (he’s) black… (he) can’t play because (he’s) black.”
“I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain’t even funny.”
Curley’s wife
“never (gets) to talk to nobody” and that she “(gets) awfully lonely”,
“What’s the matter with me? Ain’t I got a right to talk to nobody?
‘tart’, ‘jailbait’
‘her fingernails were red’,
‘the eye’
‘(gets) awfully lonely’ and that she ‘never (gets) to talk to nobody’
‘coulda been in the movies, an had nice clothes…an I coulda sat in them big hotels, an had pitchers took of me…because the guy said I was a natural.
‘ache for attention’ and now ‘she was very pretty and simple, and her face was sweet and young’.
‘could ever break down a thousand little defenses she has built up, you would find a nice person, an honest person, and you would end up by loving her. But such a thing could never happen’
Curley
Curley lashed his body around.
“Curley’s like alot of little guys. He hates big guys. He’s alla time picking scraps with big guys. Kind of like he’s mad at ‘em because he ain’t a big guy. You seen little guys like that, ain’t you? Always scrappy?”
‘gloves full of vaseline’
‘high heeled boots’
Curley’s like alot of little guys. He hates big guys.
“I get lonely,” she said. “You can talk to people, but I can’t talk to nobody but Curley. Else he gets mad
Slim
“Slim don’t need to wear no high-heeled boots on a grain team.”
…he moved with a majesty achieved only by royalty and master craftsmen… the prince of the ranch… a gravity in his manner and a quiet so profound that all talk stopped when he spoke. His authority was so great that his word was taken on any subject, be it politics or love…
He might have been thirty-five or fifty. His ear heard more than was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.
He knelt down beside Curley. “You got your senses in hand enough to listen?” he asked. Curley nodded. “Well, then listen,” Slim went on. “I think you got your han’ caught in a machine. If you don’t tell nobody what happened, we ain’t going to. But you jus’ tell an’ try to get this guy canned and we’ll tell ever’body, an’ then will you get the laugh.”
George looked over at Slim and saw the calm, Godlike eyes fastened on him.
It is Slim, in the end, who suggests that George did the right thing in killing Lennie mercifully. He explains the alternative: “An s’pose they lock him up an’ strap him down and put him in a cage. That ain’t no good, George.
Slim sighed. “Well, I guess we got to get him. Where you think he might of went?”
Slim stood looking down at Curley’s wife. He said, “Curley—maybe you better stay here with your wife.”
Slim said, “You hadda, George. I swear you hadda. Come on with me.” He led George into the entrance of the trail and up toward the highway
Lennie
- ’ Tie… up with a collar like a dog’
- ‘dog’ -> ‘terrier’\
- ’ Lennie covered his face with his huge paws and bleated with terror’
- ’ Machine’
’ Lennie ain’t a mean guy’
- ’ Strong as a bull’
- ’ The loneliest guys in the world’
- ’ But not us cause I got you and you got me’
‘good boy’
- ‘Live off the fatta the lan’
- ‘Why’d you gotta get killed’ (passive verb construction)-‘I pinched their heads and then they was dead’
George
I could live so easily without you
maybe have a girl
-> ‘jerky’,
crazy bastard” “Poor bastard
To get in trouble like you always done before
If I was alone I could live so easy
Slowly, like a terrier who doesn’t want to bring a ball to its master,
…if I was alone I could live so easy. I could go get a job an’ work, an’ no trouble.
I wish I could put you in a cage with about a million mice an’ let you have fun.”
Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world…They ain’t got nothing to look ahead to”
I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you
He’s my . . . . cousin.
angry little man
Solitaire
Soledad
