Of Mice And Men Conflict Analysis

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When a person experiences major conflicts in their life, those conflicts can cause the person to change in many different ways. Each person can change in dramatically different ways. For example, some of the ways people could respond to their conflicts are becoming violent, trying to make the world around them better, or they could just give up. The idea that conflicts can change people is shown frequently by George in the novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Nancy in the documentary War Dance, and Kino in the Novella The Pearl.
Throughout the novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, the character George was changed by the many conflicts he faced. One example of this is in chapter 2 while George is telling slim about him and lennie he says, “One day a bunch of guys was standing around up on the Sacramento River. I turns to Lennie and says ‘jump in.’ And he jumps. Couldn’t swim a stroke. He damn near drowned before we could get him. I ain’t done nothing like that no more(40).” This shows how Lennie almost drowning because of what he did Scared George so much that it made him rethink the way he treated him. At the end of the book after George had to shoot Lennie he gave up on his dream of starting a farm and making a good life for himself. The mental conflict of whether or not to shoot his best friend in the head was so hard for him that he gave up on his dream, and because Lennie loved to talk about that dream it so it didn’t feel right for George to do it without him. Like George Nancy from War Dance experienced many conflicts that changed who she was. The documentary War Dance tells of a school in a refugee camp in northern Uganda that the refugee children attend. One of the students there is a 14 year old girl named Nancy. She has 3 younger siblings that she cares for because her father was “chopped into pieces” by the rebels and her mother has to work at a different refugee camp to support them. This changed Nancy in many ways, because it forced her
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On page 59 Kino beats his wife Juana because she tried to throw the pearl back into the sea, ”Her arm was up to throw when he leaped at her and caught her arm and wrenched the pearl from her. He struck her in the face with his clenched fist and she fell among the boulders and he kicked her in the side.” Before Kino had discovered the pearl he would have never done anything like that. A little while later in chapter five when a man stole the pearl from Kino, he killed the man in order to get the pearl back. This shows that the pearl and all the conflicts that it has brought have changed Kino into a violent man. Conflicts can change people. This idea was shown frequently throughout the stories Of Mice and Men, War Dance, The Pearl. The characters George, Nancy, and Kino from the stories showed this in their own unique way. The vast majority give up or lash out at those around them, but there are a few that decide to make the world a better

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