Of Mice and Men
Prompt #24 · Of Mice and Men
Prompt Type: Theme + Device
Steinbeck employs dialect and vernacular speech throughout the novel to distinguish characters and establish authenticity. Analyze how this linguistic technique reinforces the novel's themes of social class, education, and the marginalization of itinerant workers. Explain how it contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.
Quote 1
“’Cause I’m black. They play cards in there, but I can’t play because I’m black. They say I stink. Well, I tell you, you all of you stink to me.”
Chapter 4
Argument
Crooks's vernacular speech—'Cause I'm black,' 'I can't play because I'm black,' 'you all of you stink to me'—uses simple, direct dialect to expose racial marginalization, with the repetition of 'black' and the grammatical informality reinforcing his exclusion from educated society and his position at the bottom of the ranch's social hierarchy.
Quote 2
“Yeah. Nice fella too. Got a crooked back where a horse kicked him. The boss gives him hell when he’s mad. But the stable buck don’t give a damn about that. He reads a lot. Got books in his room.”
Chapter 2
Argument
Candy's dialect—'Got a crooked back,' 'gives him hell,' 'don't give a damn'—establishes the workers' vernacular while simultaneously noting that Crooks 'reads a lot' and 'Got books in his room,' creating a juxtaposition between education and social class that reveals how literacy cannot overcome racial and physical marginalization.
Quote 3
“Guys like us got no fambly. They make a little stake an’ then they blow it in. They ain’t got nobody in the worl’ that gives a hoot in hell about ’em—”
Chapter 6
Argument
George's vernacular—'got no fambly,' 'blow it in,' 'gives a hoot in hell'—uses non-standard grammar and colloquial expressions to linguistically embody the itinerant workers' lack of education and social standing, with the fragmented syntax and informal diction reinforcing their transient, powerless existence.
Quote 4
“Ain’t many guys travel around together,” he mused. “I don’t know why. Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”
Chapter 2
Argument
Slim's dialect—'Ain't many guys,' 'I don't know why,' 'ever'body in the whole damn world'—uses vernacular speech from the ranch's most respected figure to articulate the novel's central theme of isolation, demonstrating how even characters with social authority employ non-standard grammar that marks their working-class status and limited formal education.
Quote 5
“—I think I knowed from the very first. I think I knowed we’d never do her. He usta like to hear about it so much I got to thinking maybe we would.”
Chapter 5
Argument
George's vernacular—'I knowed,' 'we'd never do her,' 'He usta like'—employs non-standard past tense forms and colloquial expressions to convey the dream's collapse, with the linguistic informality reinforcing how the itinerant workers' lack of education and economic power makes their aspirations linguistically and materially unattainable.