Of Mice and Men: The Movie

     The flashback at the end of the movie shows George and Lennie when they are working at the ranch. George and Lennie are picking up a bag together and putting it on the back of a wagon. They are smiling at each other like best friends. Then they just turn around and walk away into the distance. George being a few steps in front of Lennie and he is holding on to George's back so that he doesn't fall down.

     The flashback leaves the audience feeling unhappy. It left the audience unhappy because it shows how good of friends Lennie and George were. When George shot Lennie in the back of his head it was a shock because it happened so suddenly. When a person is killed it isn't happy or joyful, it's very sad and downcast. It shows how much Lennie actually meant to George and that Lennie wasn't a disturbance in George's life. At the beginning of the movie Lennie says how he could take care of himself and doesn't need George if he is disturbing George. George says no not just because Lennie's Aunt Clara told him to but because they have been through so much together.

     The feeling at the end of the movie kind of matches the feeling of the end of the book. This is because in both Lennie gets shot in the back of his head, like I said before death isn't a merry thing. The ending in the movie felt a little bit more sad because you could actually see how George shot Lennie. In the movie it is also the interpretation of how the director thought it should look. The ending in the book was very personal; you could visualize how you thought it would happen. It's like you are the director of how you see what happens in the book.

     The line of dialogue at the end of the book is, "And Carlson said, "Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin' them two guys?" (pg. 107 paragraph 13) This line tells us that a friendship like the one Lennie and George wasn't very common back in that time and also that dead people really didn't mean a lot. When Carlson says this he is confused because he knows Lennie is dead but doesn't think much of it. He sees it as nothing special or a reason for George and Slim to be sad about. Not only does this expression describe Carlson at that point in the book but at the same time it describes Curley. It describes Curley as well because Curley is next to Carlson also seeing George and Slim. Curley doesn't really say much and he was the one who wanted to kill Lennie in the first place. Both don't realize how much doing what George did hurt him.

     The feeling that the line leaves the reader with is confusion. Confusion because the way they spoke in that time was so different from how we speak today. Since this book was written in that time the dialogue is very different. By just reading the line you won't understand what it means. You have to use context clues to understand what Carlson is trying to say and show. I felt kind of angry because when I first read it I didn't know what it meant until we discussed it. I also felt angry because how could John Steinbeck end the novella with just this one line and nothing else.

     I really liked the novella Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. When I was reading it seemed like an easy read but once we started discussing different conflicts in the book, I started to realize that it wasn't just an easy read. Everything that just seemed like nothing while reading it all had a meaning after you analyzed everything. At the end of the book I felt sympathetic for Lennie because he was just standing there, listening to George talk about their dream, not expecting his best friend to shoot him.

     I feel that writing down questions or notes on a sticky note or an index card really helped with understanding more the text. If you ever had a question about a conflict in the book you would just write it down on. Sometimes the answer to a question came as you read further into the book or when we discussed about it in class. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes book with the theme of friendship with a twist. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes reading books with the theme of friendship with a twist because this novella shows the theme of friendship a lot, but at the same time it has a twist at the end. I feel that this novella is a great representation of that kind of story.