"Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land": En nivåstudie av produktion, struktur, ensamhet och begär i John Steinbecks Of Mice and Men
2010 (Swedish)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
My main purpose with this paper of John Steinbecks Of mice and men is to both analyze the long-lived structures and the unique individual destinies of the novel. I employ the method of the historical Annales-movement and use three divided levels in my analysis to try to capture these high structures and low moments of humanity in Structure, Konjuncture and the Individuality. The first level, Structure, is used to see how long-lived almost invisible geographic structures set the human act of condition. The second level, Konjuncture, is easier to grasp in understanding of time and embraces for example economic structures as the industrialism. The last level of Individuality is the fastest in time and easiest to understand but in the long run also the least important. Humans are controlled by structures and norms. I try to inspect what these three levels look like in Of Mice and Men and how they affect each other and the main characters of the novel.
I make use of Foucault and Butler in the Konjuncture-level to explore how power, production and discourse create structures that affects the working man and the “non-working” woman in Of Mice and Men. I adopt Butler to see how Steinbeck creates gender through clothes and working tools. In the Indivual-level we can see the effects of the other levels in the characters actions. For example how their sexual preferences are effects of the power-structure of the production (Rubin and Foucault), how a society see images of filth or purity when someone differ from the norm (Douglas and Foucault) and how we sacrifice one member of the social group to contain stability when chaos threatens (Girard).
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2010. , p. 35
Keywords [en]
Annales, Butler, Discourse, Douglas, Foucault, Gender, Girard, Of Mice and Men, Power, Queer, Rubin, Steinbeck, Structure
National Category
General Literature Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-5669OAI: oai:DiVA.org:sh-5669DiVA, id: diva2:391381
Presentation
(Swedish)
Uppsok
Humanities, Theology
Supervisors
Examiners
2011-01-252011-01-242011-01-25Bibliographically approved