An opening plays an enormous role in a story. Not only does it “hook” readers, but it also sets the tone and launches the plot. The opening in Of Mice and Men achieves just that. It starts by describing a setting, a pool of the Salinas River. Steinbeck makes note of the safety and peace of the pool in the opening lines, describing the tone of the setting as warm, twinkling, golden, strong, and fresh. Further into the opening of Of Mice and Men you realize the diction when the two characters, Lennie and George, are introduced.
When the two men speak, their diction sounds very uneducated, sometimes difficult to understand or read. Their vocabulary is also simple and includes a lot of slang. The opening introduces its readers to an important setting, a pool of the Salinas River, tone, safe and peaceful, and the diction, uneducated and substandard. In Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, the main themes presented are loneliness, friendship, the nature of dreams, and eventually how these three affect and form human relationships. The characters George and Lennie have a powerful bond because of the dream they share, and that they don’t want to be lonely.
Steinbeck reinforces the theme loneliness in the very name of the town, Soledad, which means “solitude” or “alone”. Even though the name of the town was no accident, the theme loneliness is most represented in Candy, Crooks, and Curly’s wife. For example, until its death, Candy’s dog stopped Candy from being alone. These characters also have dreams that brought them closer to others. For example, Candy sharing George and Lennie’s dream and Curly’s wife shares her dream with Lennie in the bunk house.
However, Steinbeck shows towards the end of the book that although these dreams join people together and makes them stronger, ultimately will be destroyed and never last. This shows how human relationships are formed on fragile fragments of hope and, like dreams, never last. However, he also shows after Lennie is killed, where Slim helps to comfort George, that although these relationships are weak, they are needed for human survival. There are several conflicts that appear in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, but the major conflict is a man vs. ociety, the man being Lennie. Many see Lennie as the “bad guy”, but it is really everyone else that pushes and taunts him. Lennie doesn’t realize his own strength and when he pets the soft and pretty things he loves, “… I like to pet nice things with my fingers, sof’ things”, whether a mouse or a girl, he pets it too hard and they end up dying. George works so hard to take care of Lennie, and they’re both protective of each other. When Lennie kills Curly’s wife, George has to make a tough decision that may just be the most loyal and protective action ha can take.
He has to kill Lennie to keep him from hurting others and himself. In the end of Of Mice and Men, George shoots him out of love. The last words George and Lennie spoke together were about the dream that they shared, the one society would never let them have, and then Lennie dies with a smile. In Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, the climax of the plot comes when Lennie Kills Curly’s wife and runs off to hide where he knows he will be safe, a pool of the Salinas River. He knows that George is going to make everything alright, like he always does.
George will do anything for Lennie and always minimizes the consequences of Lennie’s actions, from his dead mice to his puppy to his clumsy and inappropriate behavior. The climax of any story gives the reader an idea of which way it might end and represents a turning point putting the reader in a position to consider the possible outcomes. In Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck’s characterization of George and Lennie, their actions gives the reader no doubt about their commitment to each other and their dream. The reader is also aware the story could end tragically due to the foreshadowing of George always having to fix Lennie’s blunders.
Lennie has some sense of George’s feelings, although he can neither comprehend nor explain them. George can’t fix this, so it changes the outcome as George runs out of possible choices and can only protect his friend from himself by killing him, and destroying any chance either of them had for the future they both dreamt of. Both of them must face the reality and the fact that their dream will never be realized. In Of Mice and Men, my favorite character would have to be George Milton. One reason George is my favorite character is because I can empathize with him the most.
I understand how having a friend can sometimes seem like more trouble than good, but the trouble is worth it rather than being alone. Even though George could have a much better life without Lennie, he still sticks with him, because at the end of the day, he’d rather have to take care of his best friend like a clumsy child rather than not having anyone. George’s attitude towards Lennie also makes him a respectable character. Even though Lennie always gets them into trouble, George always helps him and gets them out of trouble, like the incident in Weed.
In addition to his relationship with Lennie, George himself is responsible, a dreamer, isn’t quick to hate and turn bitter like most, but more importantly, he is compassionate. The main reason George is my favorite character is how he tries desperately to spare Lennie pain in all ways. The ending in Of Mice and Men moved me to tears. George didn’t want to have to kill Lennie, but he knew that it was the best way to save Lennie from any more suffering and that he had to do it alone, just him and Lennie. He made sure that Lennie felt at peace and was happy before he shot him.
Albert Einstein, a mathematician and theoretical physicist, is one of the twentieth century’s most influential people. He is best known for his Special and General Theory of Relativity and the concepts of mass-energy equivalence expressed by the famous equation, E=mc^2. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 for his service to theoretical physics, his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect, and the essential contributions he made to the early development of quantum theory. Albert Einstein’s experiments and discoveries had an enormous impact on not only the general public, but the world.
Einstein gave us a lot of the knowledge in Physics and technology that laid the foundation for all the industrial and technical developments that have happened in the past few years. One example is the GPS systems used to navigate today. An understanding of Einstein’s theories of relativity is necessary to build a global positioning system using satellites. Ships have better navigation systems, more goods are being transported from other countries, and normal people can go practically anywhere all thanks to Albert Einstein.
Albert Einstein was the first born child to Hermann and Pauline on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Germany. In 1881, Einstein gained a younger sister, Maria, called Maja by all who knew her; she was Einstein’s closest childhood friend. He attended elementary school at the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich, enjoyed classical music, and played the violin. Much of Einstein’s youth showed to be particularly intriguing. Einstein was slow in learning how to speak and experienced a speech difficulty, a slow cadence in his speaking where he would pause to consider what to say next.
His cheeky rebelliousness towards authority led one headmaster to expel him and another to amuse many by saying that he would never amount to much. These traits actually helped shape Einstein into the genius we know today, like how his cocky contempt for authority led him to question typical wisdom. Additionally, his slow verbal development led to his curiosity about ordinary things that most people take for granted, like space and time. At the age of five, Einstein’s father gave him a compass; he would puzzle over the nature of a magnetic field for the rest of his life.
In 1949, Einstein once wrote that “an irresistible longing to uncover the secrets of nature”, was what motivated him. Albert Einstein had several motivating factors in his life, many of which followed him since youth. Einstein wrote about two marked effects on his childhood; discovering a book about geometry at twelve, and his father giving him a compass at the age of five. He would read the geometry book over and over again, but Einstein would puzzle over the nature of a magnetic field for the rest of his life. Most significantly, Einstein’s youth was marked by deep inquisitiveness and inquiry.
Einstein was very serious about his ambitions, and he was very dedicated and tenacious in pursuing his objectives. His drive and energy is directed toward his accomplishments and achieving concrete results. A huge motivating factor of Albert Einstein is his never ending passion to find out all the secrets of the universe. Albert Einstein is known as one of the world’s greatest scientists. In the first decades of the twentieth century, Einstein changed the course of physics and the view of the universe with his theories, ideas, and discoveries.
Einstein had a very fascinating childhood; in fact he despised school. His interest in math a science began well around the age of four, but by the time he was thirteen, he was reading and understanding scientific material that many adults found impossible to comprehend. Albert Einstein also reminds me a little bit of my father in how they studied non-stop for hours without end. I want to know more about to story of his discoveries, how he thought about everything, and how he went from one idea to another.
A quote referring to Einstein’s involvement on nuclear weapons, “If only I knew I should have become a watchmaker”, made me want to ask him what he would do if his life started all over again; would he choose to go into physics again or choose a different path. Finally I would ask him if he agreed with String theory and all the further advancements man has made in the field of quantum mechanics, since he never agreed with probabilistic physics. He famously said, “God does not play dice”. But since he died, the probabilistic model has been proved beyond all reasonable doubt.
