The one event that really gets the plot going is the two traveler's flight from Weed, caused by Lennie's lack of restraint. Lennie saw a girl wearing a red dress and wanted to feel the fabric. When he grabbed the dress, the girl screamed and a search party came after him. George, hearing the noise, ran to Lennie's rescue. They both fled, leaving their jobs. George realized that Lennie could not stop himself from touching things that felt good, and with this, George had to live.

Candy, George's elder friend, demonstrates how heartbreaking it is to make a choice for your friends. Candy unselfishly put down his best friend. When Lennie visits Crooks, the black stable boy, Crooks opens up about how lonely life without a friend is. George must endure this at the end of thestory. When Curley's wife shows up in the barn, tragedy strikes.

The high point of this book is when Lennie kills Curley's wife. The wife let's him stroke her hair, only he doesn't know when to stop, like always. She gets scared and puts Lennie in a panic. Thrashing about he accidentally breaks her neck. He runs to his hiding spot, where George told him to go. As the other men find the body and start rounding up a search party, George steals the Luger, a handgun, and sneaks away to the hiding spot. There he meets Lennie and sooths him while going over his options. In his mind, he finds what is best for Lennie, and pulls the trigger ending his friend's life.

I think Steinbeck wrote this book to show the challenges of a friendship, seen through George's struggles with Lennie. He showed how hard it was for George to pull the trigger and end his best friend's life. Steinbeck made me realize just how hard it is to really do the best thing for a friend.

Obviously any novel on the depression contains a great deal of despair within it, because without despair there can be no hope. In John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, (Hong Kong: The Readers Digest, 1992) and Harriette Arnow's The Dollmaker, (New York: Perennial, 2003) there are numerous examples of despair brought about by disappointing new circumstances and environments portrayed and experienced through the novels' characters and events.

In The Grapes of Wrath the Joad family suffer one disappointment and set back after another during their search for a better life in California. Grampa and Granma die during the family's epic voyage to the west in an old jalopy, Uncle John battles alcoholism, Noah and Connie walk out on the family in despair of ever finding something better together as a family unit, and Rose of Sharon gives birth to a stillborn baby. One book reviewer at the time described the novel "as pitiful ... a novel ever to be written about America." (Jack p.160)

Similar despair is evident in The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow. When the family move to Detroit during World War II, in search of a better life, they instead find only despair and heartache. Gertie Nevels can not adjust to their new, cramped surroundings, Clovis gets tied in with the unions and is badly beaten, Reuben runs away back home realising that the grass is not greener in Detroit (in fact there's no grass at all) and the biggest blow comes with the death of young Cassie on the railway tracks by the family's small house. The reader also sees the despair experienced by those families surrounding the Nevels as well, including the drunken aggression of Mr. Daley, the abandonment of Victor by his wife, Max, and the tears that flow at various times during the book from Mrs. Anderson, Mrs Bommarita, and Sophronie and so on.

It seems that many people don't know what they have until it is gone, and all this despair serves a purpose, as many of the characters eventually realise that they were better off as they were, before they began to dream and try to move towards a better life for themselves. Some may say that the exception to this would be the Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath, as they had already lost their farm to the depression and their circumstances when the novel began were generally out of their control. However, their decision to move to California was their own choice and it is not until they reach the west coast state that they realise they were better off back in Oklahoma. Their plight is summed up brilliantly by a stranger they meet bathing in the Colorado River who when asked if he's going to California, states that he's returning home to Pampa because "at leas' we can starve to death with folks we know. Won't have a bunch of fellas that hates us to starve with." (Steinbeck p.197)

In the case of the Nevels family in The Dollmaker, the house they were living in, back in Kentucky, was much larger and nicer than the one they moved into in Detroit. Gertie Nevels even had enough money saved up after fifteen years to buy a house and land (the Tipton place) outright, instead they move to Detroit and keep renting. In Kentucky they had fresh vegetables and other food easily at hand, and Gertie could make a little money here and there selling eggs and such things, but in Detroit fresh produce was harder to come by and subsequently many of the family meals lacked the same warmth and freshness that they had back in the country. Also when Cassie lays dying in her mother's arms, in an attempt to cheer her up and keep her smiling Gertie tells her that they'll, "be goen home pretty soon - real soon. It's spring - an you can climb trees agin an run ...." (Arnow p.409) Gertie chooses the image of their old life in Kentucky because that was where the family were at their happiest, not Detroit, and this is the image that she wants Cassie to hold onto. "Faced with bleak conditions, Gertie feels alienated, stifled, and, at critical moments, acquiescent." (Walsh p.185)

However, the main message that these novels try to get across to their readers, is that despite all the hardship and despair that people experienced during the depression, there was always a great hope that things would get better for the people of America. What goes up must come down, and visa versa and people knew that they were going through one of the hardest times in their lives during the depression, and that things could only improve from there on.

In The Grapes of Wrath we see Tom Joad for the final time, hiding from the law in a thicket, and being secreted food by his ma. Tom is probably in the deepest pit of despair he could imagine. He has violated his parole by leaving his home county and has killed a man, and is being hunted by the local law enforcers. Yet Tom still has hope that things will change for the better, and his hope is not just for himself but it extends to the rest of the American people that he has seen suffering along the way. "I been thinkin ... how our folks took care a theirselves, an ... I been a-wonderin' why we can't do that all over ... All work together for our own thing - all farm our own lan." (Steinbeck p.402) So the last glimpse of Tom we get is that of someone full of optimism and hope that he can still make a positive difference in the world that he lives. In fact the Joad's journey can be seen as "the ultimate optimistic, ennobling process." (Levant p.99)

At the end of The Dollmaker Harriette Arnow leaves the reader with a sense of hope that things will improve for the Nevels family. When Gertie takes the carved block of cherry-wood to be cut up she is not destroying it out of desperation at never being able to finish it or find its face, but instead it is "a gesture of investment - the cherry-wood block in exchange for a promising source of income." (Parker p.214) Gertie obviously has enough hope in her current situation that she is going to need that income for the future of her and her family.

Even Woody Guthrie's autobiography, Bound for Glory (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2004), although set mainly during the great depression has a positive message of hope found within its pages. Where people can dream there is always hope, and Louis Adamic, writing for the New Yorker summed up Woody Guthrie's Bound for Glory as being about "not the deeds of princes but the dreams of people." (Jackson p.8)

The film versions of all three books, The Grapes of Wrath, The Dollmaker and Bound for Glory also focus heavily on this idea of hope coming out of the depression. Near the end of The Grapes of Wrath (2004) Tom Joad leaves the family from the dance-floor of the government run camp, but there is hope in his eyes and "Tom's speech and mission look forward." (Gossage p.122) In The Dollmaker (1983) the final scene shows the Nevels family buying a new truck with the proceeds from Gertie's whittling, and returning as a family to Kentucky. As the credits roll on Bound for Glory (2000) Woodie Guthrie's character can be seen sitting on the roof of train, once again moving forward, and all to the upbeat strains of Woodie's This Land is Your Land.

So these three successful novels and films based on events that occurred around the time of the great depression in America, were all created around a similar formula. They were based around a character or set of characters that at the start are settled or doing well for themselves. The characters are then shown to suffer in a new environment and with new circumstances forced upon them by the depression. However, despite all that the characters have suffered and endured on their search for a better life and an escape from the great depression, they still maintain hope, and as explained, this hope is evident in the pages of the novels and in the scenes of the films.

Soledad, California 93960

October 12, 2006

Mr. Willis Smalls

Father of Lennie

14 Elm Street

Weed, California 96094

I am sorry to inform you that your son Lennie is dead. In a sense I almost saved him. Before I tell you how he died I would just like to tell you what has happened since you had last seen him. When we were working at a ranch in Weed. The ranch relatively North of where you are, Lennie got himself in trouble. He grabbed a woman's dress and would not let go. We were forced to leave the town to search for new jobs. We found a new ranch to work at so we moved to Soledad, which is a small town still in the northern region California.

When we got there the boss told us that we were to buck barley for our job. All was going fine until we met the boss's son. He was trying to pick a fight with Lennie already.

Just a couple of days later there finally was a fight. Curley, the boss's son, came into the room and started to slap Lennie. Lennie didn't want to do no harm but he ended up crushing Curley's hand.

Later during the week Lennie got in big trouble. He had gotten a puppy and killed it accidentally, but that wasn't the worst thing he did in the day. Curley's wife later came into the room to talk to Lennie. Lennie then killed her. When Curley found out, he wanted to make Lennie suffer as much as he could. I took one of the worker's guns and went to find Lennie myself. For a few minutes I talked to him I got him thinking happy thoughts before I took his life into my own hands. I shot Lennie in the back of the head to make sure he didn't feel a thing.

Sincerely,

George Milton,

Lennie's Best Friend