How Does The Film Add To Your Understanding Of The Novel? Essay, Research Paper
The film adaptation of John Steinbeck?s ?Of Mice and Men? opens with scenes of a woman in a red dress, running through fields in desperate escape from some undefined terror. Her flight frames the movie, as though she is running, headlong, into the nameless dread of the future. As it turns out, the woman is in fact running from Lennie, and Lennie and George are running from her protectors. In the novel, we do not become aware of exactly what happens to cause her fear until chapter three, when George is speaking with Slim, the skinner. Difference within sequence of scenes such as this help the reader to develop a better understanding of things that have happened in the storyline.
Although the setting of the story may not appear to be significant, the plot could have taken place in a few other places. Migrant life is essential to the story; it must occur in a location and at a time which male migrants were used to farm the land and carry out the work at ranches. It is also essential that the ranch be relatively isolated to provide George and Lennie with their cover and escape. The movie succeeds in portraying this, the setting making a huge impact on the reader, because it lives up to all of its requirements. The men are hard working and skilled, the ranch is isolated, and the story takes place in the period during The Great Depression, which assists in exploring the theme of loneliness throughout the story.
The supporting cast in the movie is what keeps the plot moving along and provides symbolic significance to the characters that each member portrays. Curley and his wife provide suspense and climax. They symbolise evil; both repress and abuse migrants, with different approaches, but achieving the affect of appearing to be superior to them all, using their relation to the boss as a threat to the men?s employment. Their threat is emphasised by their body language and the way that they treat other people on the ranch. Curley is always out to pick a fight, and his wife always ?searching? for him, stirring up trouble between her husband and the other men on the ranch that she comes into contact with.
George and Lennie?s friendship forms the core of the story. Its sincerity is never questioned; the men are inseparable, and what keeps them together is the dream that they share. The dream of one day owning their own farm, and as Lennie often says, ?Live off the fatta? the lan??. This vision is articulated by George in the form of the story he tells Lennie; it is Lennie?s faith that enables the hardened, cynical George to imagine the possibility of the dream becoming real- and Lennie?s death shatters George?s hope. We are shown this realisation as a series of flashbacks in George?s mind after he shoots Lennie.
Candy plays an important role in the story. He is an ageing ranch handyman who lost his hand four years earlier in an accident, and worries about his future on the ranch. He seizes George?s description of the farm, offering his own savings if he can join George and Lennie in owning the land. It is him who makes the men?s dream come to life, makes George believe that their dream might just possibly come true. Candy owns a dog, whose fate ? it is shot in the back of the head in an act of mercy- parallels that of Lennie. The death of his dog represents the end of a relationship that made life living and provided hope, as is the death of Lennie, who provided hope for George. A comparison between the two ?gentle animals? is obvious; both are victims of a plot designed for tragedy.
Minor characters in the story cling to their own personal visions of life. Crooks, the black stable buck, clings to the nostalgic remembrance of his happy childhood, where he fitted in, in amongst many other people who were the same colour as him, a time and place when he was accepted and free of prejudice. His fear is evident from the way he reacts to the appearance of Curley?s wife; he curls up on his bed and looks supremely terrified of the possibilities of what she could have done to him. Crooks? loneliness provides a counterpoint to George and Lennie?s life. He helps explain why George is willing to put up with Lennie and hide his crimes, and makes the reader understand the origin of Lennie?s strength.
The only character who doesn?t have a dream is Slim, whose skill and mastery of the ranch bring him peace and contentment, emotions alien to that of his fellow ranch hands. He keeps to himself and needs no dream to keep his spirit and passion alive. He is an insightful man, and he alone understands the nature of the bond between George and Lennie. Slim is a voice of reason in the tragedy, consoling George after shooting Lennie. The director has chosen to leave this scene out of the movie however, ending the movie with visions coming from within George?s imagination, memories of the many happy times that he and Lennie had shared.
Steinbeck?s story emphasises the loneliness and powerlessness of its characters, which take comfort from dreams of a better life. The central dream, of course, is Lennie and George?s dream to buy a farm, which comes to be shared by Candy. His eagerness to join them is a testimony to the power of the vision of owning private land. The deterministic sense of reality, in which people are controlled by unknowable forces, is the novel?s central theme. All the characters are intensely lonely and unhappy with their lives, yet none of them can escape this unhappiness. Economic and social forces control them, and free will seems illusory. This lack of control over their lives forces them to locate their happiness elsewhere- in their dreams. The whole point of the character?s visions is that they are not real, and ?Of Mice and Men? is essentially the story of how George learns that hard lesson and comes to grip with a life of lost illusions.