The responsibilities of aspiration and hope play a major role in the structure of George, Lennie and Curley?s wife?s character. To an extent their aspirations protect them from reality for short stints and acts like a recharge to their motivational batteries. This is a good thing more often than not. Examples of these instances are when Lennie and George are sitting on the bank of a pool of the Salinas river in the last chapter. George is in the process of telling Lennie how together they are “gonna get a little place.” He does this because he knows it makes Lennie happy and he wants Lennie?s last thoughts to be of his ideal world not terror. George then shoots Lennie in the back of the head doing whats best for everyone, and Lennie dies in a state of utopia, his reward. An example of Curley?s wife?s hopes is when she finally finds a person around the ranch who sees her not as an object of lust but someone to talk to. This person is Lennie. Of course he subsequently snaps her neck when they are both in a state of hysteria, but for a brief moment she was a step closer to her hope. Talking to Lennie was her reward in a sense.
The responsibilities of friendship, whether it be marriage as with Curley and his wife or mateship as in Lennie and George?s situation, also play a vital role. George and Lennie?s friendship is an ideal one where they both respect, help and love each other in their eyes. There is an example of this unity at the start of the novel when both George and Lennie are sitting around a fire ready to make dinner. Referring to their baked beans Lennie makes the comment of “I like ?em with ketchup.” After this comment George explodes into a verbal rage explaining how he could have so much fun by himself and how much of a burden Lennie is to him. When George finishes his ?speech? Lennie attempts to reconcile by explaining to George how he could go and live in a cave in the hills. This ?guilt trip? delivers a realisation to George that he has been nasty. They then patch things up by discussing their utopia. Curley and his wife?s marriage is filled with mixed emotions and motives. Curley is filled with disgust for his wife for marrying such a poor choice of a ?man? and he expresses this by attempting to control her, ever worried that she will cheat on him. He is very paranoid. She used him to get out of a situation she was not comfortable with and is now in a worse one where she cannot communicate with anyone properly. She has become a prisoner. Curley and his wife take a negative approach towards their marriage therefore getting little out of the relationship and no real rewards. George and Lennie on the other hand ?feed? off each other in a sense and grow in responsibility and love.
The rewards of responsibility vary in size and quality. As a result of George and Lennie?s commitment towards each other they are rewarded with friendship and companionship. Crooks?s alienation delivers to him humility and a realisation of how it is very difficult to function without friendship, he has gained knowledge at a price. His bitterness and anger also get him through life unlike Candy. Curley?s wife?s reward has turned into a burden, she is free from her mother but no longer is granted a social life. Candy had his hand severed off at work and is rewarded by compensation and an easier workload. But he is disabled and lonely due to the departure of his dog making his life sad and without meaning. Due to Curley?s bloodlines he probably never will get retrenched, but no body likes him not even his wife.
In my opinion the burdens outweigh the rewards of responsibility in this novel. In some ways it is rather macabre that John Steinbeck builds his characters up to their most probable height of achieving their utopia and then kills them or part of them off. But in another perspective this style of writing is quite ingenuitive because the main characters set out with a goal and when they manage to grasp a fragment of it they wither away or die. This is as if their purpose in the story has been served. Their services are no longer needed to help get the message across that life can either be a responsibility of burdens or a rewards full of responsibilities.
English Work Requirement
year 10