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Of Mice and Men- Imagery


            
             John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is a story of two men in pursuit of their vision of owning a farm and the tragic destruction of that vision during their stay at the ranch. The use of imagery and figurative language, and the style with which the author depicts his characters and their hopeless dreams, are the basis for concluding the main themes in the last chapter of the novel. .
             Imagery plays an important role in setting the mood for Lennie's predestined death. The author.
             repeatedly describes the progression of dusk, syncopated with the onset of a dark ending. "The sun had left the valley to go climbing up the slopes. The light climbed on out of the valley. Only the topmost ridges were in the sun now. The shadow in the valley was blue and soft. The shadow in the valley was bluer, and the evening came fast. - .
             Figurative language is abundant in the last chapter, particularly when the author describes the surroundings. The descriptions of the snakes in the water, like the descriptions of everything else about the clearing, are virtually the same in each chapter. The second depiction, however, adds a new and prophetic detail: ". . . and it swam the length of the pool and came to the legs of a motionless heron that stood in the shadows. A silent head and beak lanced down and plucked it out by the head, and the beak swallowed the little snake while its tail waved frantically. - It is clearly foretelling of Lennie's fate. As a theme, this applies in the sense that the journey through life, when compared to the snake's journey across the length of the pool, is one that will end, unsuspected, in accordance to fate ¾symbolized by the heron. .
             Another example of figurative writing that intertwines with the main themes of the story is of the ash pile. Though initially it seems trivial, it is a representation of forgotten hopes ¾particularly those of Lennie and George. It was by the light of the fire that their dreams were first revealed to the reader, and at the end of the story, it was by the same pile that George discarded the gun with which he killed Lennie and, along with it, their dreams of the farm.


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