How does the film add to your understanding of the novel?
Uploaded by chalice on Dec 10, 2001
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...