Language and style

Of mice and men is a story of what happened, not what should happen. The attractive simplicity of Stenbecks writing is that he achieves the difficult task of telling an unusual story in a convincing manner, without having to explain in any detail why it happened. The novel was an experiment, the first in the series for Steinbeck of writing a novel in playform. As a result, much of the action is curtailed into a few paragraphs. There are no chapter headings, only 6 clearly identifiable sections which reflect as 6 scenes of a play. If there were heading. it would have broken the flow of the story articially and interrupted the growing sense of tension and climax. The narrative follows a simple, persuasive, chronologival structure with no flashbacks, found commonly in modern novels. It also emphasises Steinbecks raw power as a storyteller. The use of figurative lang. creates an atmosphere of reality, his use of metaphor and similie in both openimg and final sections and in particula his descriptions of nature present us with a clear picture of character and setting. Use of irony is evident in his writing in relation to the failure of the dream to buy a ranch. Steinbeck uses non-standard form of english throughout. The dialect is that of an itinerant worker, this use of dialect and colloquial lang. helps add the to realism of the story and has a strong impact on us as readers.