I’m so excited, I can hardly contain myself!
FIRST OFF…THIS IS A SPOILER!
Referring to the post I recently put up about an extended metaphor entitled, “Did you spot the extended metaphors as well,” I opened up a discussion on a comparison between how Candy’s dog and Lennie were killed.
After re-reading Mrs. Griffin’s post on “Follow the LOGOS ;)”, rereading my post, and linking the comments together, I had an incredible epiphany!
I made a connection between the posts that Mrs. Griffin and I post up.
Why did John Steinbeck purposefully repeat the sudden deaths of animals that all later led to the sudden death of Lennie? John Steinbeck wanted to make a very clear comparison. He wanted to show that Lennie views the world just like an animal. His mental condition renders him impaired in many things that humans are capable of. Yes, he does act childlike. We conclude this because of our experiences, right? What do we know about children? Children are pure, naïve, and helpless because of their lack of experience. Children tend to mimic. Children tend to forget. Children tend to be irresponsible because they forget because of how unimportant it all seems, but as a child grows older, he/she breaks through that mental block and develops into maturity. Why is this? It is because, they remember through trial-and-error. (which, by the way, is one of the best ways to learn. Even though, I must admit, that it is also one of the hardest hurdles to overcome.) They have all of these experiences locked into their brain, so that they can always refer back to it like a memory bank.
Knowing this, let us go back to Lennie, who is an adult with a brain that functions like a child’s. He is in a perpetual state of memory loss; therefore, he cannot go through life like an average adult. In essence, Lennie is a child because he has a mind of a child.
Extended metaphors throughout OMM are interrelated.Let’s take it a step deeper. Delve into the comparison and you will see that Lennie not only acts childlike, but he also contains a few characteristics that can be compared to animals in general. This proves my point when Mrs. Griffin’s post on logos says, “…animals live only in the moment/present,” and when I realized that Lennie is also bounded to only the present because of his mental condition.
I also made two diagrams about the metaphors, but I can't seem to be able to put it up. If you want to see it, just ask me. Thank you.
I see a lot of good insight here. This is what we need to strive for, when we read and understand a work of literature. On a different note, if you want me to generate and post the diagrams, just ask me. Thanks for your invaluable contributions.
ReplyDeleteOh, thank you and you are most welcome! I'm fine with doing all of this because it's really fun and it doesn't feel like work.
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