Sabrina Seidl Seidl itibaren 42043 Vecchia Puglia RE, Italia itibaren 42043 Vecchia Puglia RE, Italia

When I was in Eighth Grade, the "Accelerated" kids got to read THE GRAPES OF WRATH while the "dumb" ones got stuck with OF MICE AND MEN. For this reason I didn't get to read OF MICE AND MEN until I became a teacher myself. On my initial reading really hated this book. I hated it because Steinbeck's hatred of women comes through loud and clear, and because the sentimentality and homoeroticism are combined in a most cloying and sinister way. ("Slim's total mastery of all his manly skills meant that he could listen, and care, and heal, better than any hateful disgusting woman who cared only about going to movie shows while wearing too much makeup and perfume!") Looking back, though, after rereading the book many times over the years and teaching at several different schools, I see a lot of sadness in a book that was darker, richer, stranger than I thought. George and Lennie are in flight from women, money, sex, and really from life itself. They have a beautiful little suicide pact going only Lennie is too dumb to know it. By the end of the book George knows that it's better to worship men's bodies from afar than to defile himself with the filthy bodies of women. Men who are weak enough to desire women all end up mutilated, maimed, crushed, or crooked. A parade of cripples dances through the story, all of them in thrall to Curly's Wife. Only Lennie is strong, free from desire, and therefore able to slay the Gorgon with the sausage curls. And in reward George gives him the clean, manly release he longs for, which is death.