The main purpose of this essay is to analyze the relationship between the two main characters George and Lennie in John Steinbecks novella Of Mice and Men (1937) and determine what kind of relationship they share, how their relationship is built and whether they are genuine friends or not. The definition of friendship which will mainly be employed and used is the one defined and created by Aristotle and published in his work Nicomachean Ethics. In order for the analysis to be as precise and proper as possible, the questions of how and why will constantly be asked and answered throughout the analysis in order to operate and act as guidelines for the final conclusion. Besides Aristotle’s definition of friendship, the novella will be examined from a perspective with primary focus on the concept of friendship and it will also to some extent touch the field of interpersonal relationships. The concept will then be applied to the examination of their relationship and will only take the content of the novella itself into account. To assist the theory and provide with an extended view upon friendship, the works of Allan (Kinship and Friendship in Modern Britain: 1996), Lynch (Philosophy and Friendship: 2005), Spencer (Rethinking Friendship: Hidden solidarities today: 2006) and Pahl (On Friendship: 2000) will be applied.         The conclusion derived from the analysis shows that it is possible to interpret their relationship differently depending on which aspect of their friendship one decides to highlight, but the aspect of George and Lennie’s unequal stature due to the Lennie’s mental disability is a fact impossible to not take into account. This aspect makes it impossible for them to be genuine friends, as their relationship becomes based on one person having more responsibility than the other, making their friendship non-genuine according to Aristole.

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In the early twentieth century, the American eugenics movement began to dominate much of the public discourse surrounding disability, particularly the disability known as “feeble-mindedness.” Eugenicists broadly depicted the feeble-minded as both innocent children because of their supposed lack of intelligence and moral deviants who could harm members of society. There are many studies that have analyzed the effects of this construction of disability in popular culture and American films. However, only a few scholars, such as Joseph Straus and Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, have asked what the feeble mind sounds like. Through a musical analysis of the leitmotifs present in the film scores for Of Mice and Men (1939) and Oklahoma! (1955), this thesis argues that the symptomology of feeble-mindedness and social stereotypes of the disability seeped into and influenced the musical portrayals of Jud Fry and Lennie Small. Jud and Lennie reflected many of the anxieties surrounding disability during the eugenics era. Although the films’ narratives reveal the ideological positions towards disability, music also plays a significant role announcing characters’ disability and encouraging particular responses to disability. The musicians for these films, including Aaron Copland, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Robert Russell Bennett, accomplished this task by musically imitating a disabled embodiment. By mimicking either physical symptoms or social stereotypes of feeble-mindedness, particularly obsession and idiocy, the film scores represent Jud and Lennie as either innocent children or social menaces to support the ideological stance of each film.

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).

Can we create a historical timeline of disability by using works of fiction during the twentieth century?  Or rather, how do authors use society in their works of fiction, and to what extent, both positively and negatively, is this relevant to disability history? These are the fundamental questions of this essay, to examine three works of fiction in their portrayals of disabled characters, and the society they live in. The books chosen for this essay are: To Kill a Mockingbird, Forrest Gump and Of Mice and Men. The books are examined from both an internalist and externalist point of view. To determine how writers portray disabled characters, and how the treatment the disabled characters compare to the treatment of disabled people in the society the writers lived in. To better understand the subject in question, I chose to use Ervin Goffmans’ stigma theory. The earlier research I found mostly consisted of studies with another theoretical starting point, or about another form of art, mostly film. This essay concludes that the portrayal of disabled characters in the books mostly conformed to the society the writers lived in when writing the books. In other words: society had a large influence on the writers of the books. However, there were cases where the books distinctively separated from societal norms. In all these cases, the disabled characters were shown in a better light than society would allow at the time. The reason for this is difficult to pinpoint, however I discuss that it might be because the writers’ thoughts might be ahead of their time. The twentieth century regarding disability rights were in constant change, and the writers could have been influenced by the disability rights movement.

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