Hi Everyone!
During May, I took part in the 1900-1950 readathon and one of the books I read was Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I knew that I would be studying it this year in English and I wanted to read ahead. This is a post all about what I've been learning about during this topic. At the time of writing this, I'm only a few weeks in but I already have a lot to talk about! I will keep adding things to this post as I continue my studies of it.
You can read my original review of Of Mice And Men by clicking here! This is a slightly messy post but I hope you will enjoy it none the less!
Here is a summary so that if you haven't read the novel (or it's been since you were at school!) you can understand what I talk about in this post. It will all be spoiler free so don't feel that if you haven't read it you can't read this!
George and Lennie travel between ranches looking for work. They arrive at a ranch in Soledad and start working there. They meet the other ranch workers and get to grips with how it works, but it isn't long before they get into trouble...
When I read it back in May, I had little to no knowledge of American history and so learning about the Wall Street Crash and the Depression has been fascinating. We learnt all about the migrant workers and read in to the text to think about how they were treated. There are so many tiny details that I would never have picked up on my own and I'm really enjoying analysing the text and thinking about all the intricacies of the writing and the symbolism behind lots of the characters!
We are focusing on the key theme of loneliness which is so fascinating considering the background of 1930s America and how migrant workers often didn't stay in the same ranch for very long, had no friends or family and very little money.
I didn't think this would happen, but I am back to home learning! This is making my studying this novel a little different, especially as most people are in school. However, with the rising COVID cases, I am isolating for two weeks. This means that while the rest of the class are learning pretty much normally (if you discount half the class being absent) everyone else is at home. I am alright because I have a copy of the novel but if you don't, you have to read from a word document- far from ideal!
My English teacher has been great and sent through an email detailing what I need to do to ensure I don't fall behind. I will be working through this in the next two weeks. I removed all spoilers from the summary below of what we are looking at so here are the key themes and points we are focusing on:
Steinbeck's use of language to describe the end of chapter 3
The structure of chapter 4
Research of racism in U.S. in 1930s
Chapter 5 Curley's Wife - loneliness and dreams
Chapter 6 - structure and message
Day 2 of home learning is here and I had English again today. I focused on the end of chapter three, using online videos, help sheets and documents my teachers have put together. I read the relevant section and then wrote some paragraphs focusing on what happens at the end of chapter three. If you read this novel, I highly encourage you to do some research about the Wall Street Crash and the Depression, migrant workers and the lives that they led and therefore how important George and Lennie's experiences are. It's so helpful to know all this and definitely is giving me a greater appreciation and understanding of the novel.
We are now Day 4 of home learning and today I focused on the character of Crooks who represents the black community and what it was like to be black in America at this time. This links into the theme of loneliness, which is what our final essay will be about. I also read chapter 5 which was very impactful and I just remember reading it for the first time so vividly!
Back at school now and we are watching the film to accompany the book, which is a bit of a shame but I'm not complaining! We are still doing a lot on the character of Crooks at the moment which I am finding very interesting as he is such an important character and a key part of the idea we have talked a lot about in class which is that Steinbeck is using the ranch as a microcosm of American society which is such a great concept!
We have our end of topic assessment soon, which is going to be an essay on the theme of loneliness and how it is represented through the different characters in the novel. Today I had a revision lesson and we finished the film too. We talked through what we need to include in the essay and all of that which was very helpful. We were also planning what we wanted to focus on for it and all that kind of thing.
The essay is FINALLY done! It was last thing on a Friday which to be honest was not the nicest but now it's over! I did mine on Crooks, Curley's Wife and the other links to loneliness throughout the novel. I think it went okay, I had so much I wanted to say and I ran out of time to say it all, although better that way than I have no ideas!
Studying this has been very interesting and I have got a lot more out of this read than when I read it in May, which is what I was expecting!
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and definitely let me know if you studied Of Mice and Men too, I know it's a text that has been on the GCSE syllabus (though not part of the final grading) for a while so I would be interested to know if any of you studied it!
Happy reading and studying!
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