Seize the day

The other persons on the farm think that Lennie’s rather stupid and a really weird guy. However I think that the men like him, due to the cause that he’s a really big guy who can do the work of two men.
At the start of the story when George and Lennie are attending to their job at the ranch, the owner starts to ask questions about why George don’t let Lennie answer for himself. George explains that Lennie is kind of stupid and the chief accepts that, he can see the size of Lennie and understands that he is a really good worker.
When the other men get to know Lennie a little better, they learn why he couldn’t answer the questions, he is at the same mentally level as a child. Slim says that Lennie is like a child, but that he also is the strongest man he has ever seen.

Lennie is a man who never means harm anyone, and he’s never picking a fight. He’s nice to everybody and he does not contradict any order that he’s given, he obeys them and fulfill them without any questions. He’s like a perfect employee. The other workers likes guys like this, and I think that they sympathise a little with him to, they nearly feel sorry for him and for the way he is.

Now that we have underlined that the other men like Lennie we can take the only man in the story who don’t like Lennie at all; Curley.
Curley is a little man who always is up for a fight. Because of that he’s so small he want to make himself “bigger” by fighting and defeating larger men, he really hates big men.
Since Lennie is the strongest and tallest person on the farm, Curley want to pull off a fight with him and he is always on the look for one excuse to start a fight between them.
Even though the fact that Lennie don’t want to fight him, Curley attacks him. Curley has a lot of temper and he’s like other men at that time: money spending bar-fighters.
I think that Curley learned to respect bigger guys than himself after that fight, to put it that way.

I know that George and Lennie have known each other for a very long time, because of all the examples which you can see in the text. I will now point out these reasons for you.
We can start off with the reason that George seems to know that Lennie enjoy to stroke soft, hairy things like fur. George busts him twice when Lennie is stroking a dead mouse, while on their way to the ranch. I don’t think Lennie realises that it’s disgusting to stroke dead things, but George understands it, and it’s seems to me that it has occurred several times before.
We can continue with that it seems like George knows Lennie’s family quite well, because he remembers a deceased old woman who used to give Lennie mice to pet, and recalls it to be Lennie’s aunt Clara. George also utters that he had killed himself if he were in Lennie’s family, this describes both how well and how long George has known Lennie, and how terrible he thinks Lennie’s family is.

It also seems that Lennie and George have had many jobs together because, already before they even have met the chief of the new ranch, George tells Lennie to keep his mouth shout and let him do the talking.
George know that Lennie isn’t so good with speaking and it looks like George don’t want to lose another job only because that Lennie opens his mouth. He also tells Lennie what to do all the time reasoned by that Lennie barely can take care of himself, since they also have lost a few jobs on that Lennie has done something stupid.
George always give Lennie the blame, even though he is not always aware of what he is doing.
George is also quite clear over that Lennie often forget things, so when he tells Lennie important matters he makes sure that he remembers it, for example where Lennie should go if something bad happens.

When Lennie asks George to tell him the story about how nice their new ranch would be, he already knows all the details in and out from before. However, due to the fact that they are planning to build a ranch together, which tells us quite clear that they have known each other for bit of a time already.

Many will of course ask the question of why George don’t leave Lennie and just let him take care of himself. I think that since George know Lennie so well and has known him for such a long time, he don’t have the heart to leave him over to himself since he knows that Lennie sooner or later would get into trouble with the wrong guys and end up dead.

At last we can’t avoid taking notice of the fact that when Slim is asking them questions about their “weird” friendship, with two men keeping together for such a long time, they says that they have been friends and known each other for a long time. They back each other up, each with different skills, one who is the brain and do the thinking, while the other has the muscles and do the work.

 1.  Which one of John Steinbeck’s novels won a Pulitzer Prize?
John Steinbeck’s novel, “The Grapes of Wrath” won a Pulitzer Price.

2.  Where and what year was he born?
He was born the 27th of February 1902 in Salinas Valley, California.

3.  Name three of John Steinbeck’s books that were made into Hollywood films?
Three of John Steinbeck’s books that were made into Hollywood films are: “Of Mice and Men”, “The Grapes of Wrath” and “East of Eden”.

4.  In what year did John Steinbeck write of Mice and Men?
John Steinbeck wrote of Mice and Men in 1937.

5.  What did John Steinbeck do during WWII?
During WWII John Steinbeck worked as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. He participated in many operations which went out on attacking small German-held islands. If he had been captured he had been executed, but this never happened because all of his mission were successful.
During the war he wrote a book which supported Norway, and in 1945 he received Haakon VII Medal of Freedom because of his literary contributions to those who fought against the Nazis during the war.

6.  What US President awarded Steinbeck the United States Medal of Freedom.
John Steinbeck received the United States Medal of Freedom from the US President Lyndon B. Johnson.

7.   What is John Steinbeck’s Museum called?
John Steinbeck’s Museum is called The National Steinbeck Centre.

8.  How old was Steinbeck when he died?
John Steinbeck was 66 years old when he passed away.

9.  What does the novel “The Moon is Down”, have to do with Norway?
The novel “The Moon is Down” is about a military occupation which takes place in Northern Europe, and it’s very similar to the occupation of Norway by the Germans during WWII. The book helped the Norwegian resistance movement very much.

10.  Find out on the Internet the two main characters “Of Mice and Men”.  Tell me a little about them and what the story is about  (8 sentences). 
The two main characters in “Of Mice and Men” is George Milton and Lennie Small. George is a smart and quick-witted man while Lennie is mentally disabled but strong as a bull.
George and Lennie is dreaming about having their own farm. Lennie is very fond of stroking soft, hairy things like animal fur, and this often gets him into trouble. Lennie do not know his own strength and accidentally he kills a woman while stroking her hair. She was the wife of the farmers son, at the farm he works at. He is also accused for attempting rape because he touched a woman’s dress. At the end of the story George and Lennie is chased by a lynch mob led by the farmers son, and George shoot Lennie in the back of the head to spare him from a painful death in the mob’s hands.

Question 1.) Description of all the characters in the story:

Elaine: She is a good and nice person, it’s only that she is so easy to manipulate. At the beginning of the story she does everything Cordelia tells her to do. She has no respect for herself and what she want to do. She complete the orders Cordelia give her without hesitation. She has a lot of respect for Cordelia because she don’t know what is going to happen to her if she don’t obey the orders she give. Even when she has the chance to turn her so called friends in, she tells a lie, here you see an example of both how great person she is and how much respect she has for Cordelia.
But finally, at the very end she takes to sense and become a much ”colder”  and determined person. She turns the back on her bad friends because she realize that it’s the only right thing to do since she always tries to be nice towards them, but get nothing in return. In the start, she’s really caught in a vicious circle.

Cordelia: She is just a really malicious girl, who only thinks about herself and her needs. She likes having control over every situation she is in, and bosses everybody around. Not a good person at all.
She is the leader of her friend gang. Cordelia is a really good manipulator. This you can see when she falls down a hill at the beginning, and everybody laugh at her, and she gets really mad. This anger makes her throw Elaine’s hat down into a ravine to get control over the situation again. When Elaine go the pick her hat up again, Cordelia and the rest of the gang runs away, leaving Elaine all by herself.
She is dependent on her friends, even if she don’t seem to like them since she does cruel things with them. She is just a girl who wants power, and without her friends, she wouldn’t be a thing.

Grace: I don’t get to know her quite well in the story, but after what I’ve read she seems to be working as one of Cordelia’s friends, even though she might not be it. She looks like being a little like Elaine, she don’t has enough courage to say what she want to do, instead of just walking in Cordelia’s footprints all the time, having the same opinion as the leader.
To put it short, I think she’s a weak coward, who don’t has her own opinions, but only supports the strongest side as long as it remains so.

Carol: A little stronger person than Grace. She can be both nice and cruel, but the times she is cruel, she’s often supporting or protecting Cordelia to earn some more respect from her since she’s a little frightened of her. Maybe she don’t like Cordelia at all, but she don’t dare to leave her gang.
You can see that she is a nice person when she gives Elaine a get-well card, perhaps without telling Cordelia about it.

Elaine’s Mother: She is a good, loving mother who cares about her daughter very much. She know how Elaine’s friends are like and that they have a bad influence on her daughter. That’s why she don’t want to press the truth out of her daughter when she’s lying sick, because she has already understood that Elaine didn’t fell over the bridge, but that someone make her go down into the ravine. She sees that and call the parents of the other children, a good, caring mother indeed.

Question 2.) Theme of the story:

The theme of this story is that you should hang around with good people instead of people who only want to use you and treat you like dirt. As you can see so were it a good relationship in the girl gang before Cordelia showed up. After she showed up everybody started to dislike each other because they wanted Cordelia to like them. Cordelia make them do things that they really don’t want to do, which means she really has bad influence on them. 
What the author is trying to get across the reader is that you should stay away from people who don’t treat you properly and have bad influence on you, if don’t do so you sooner or later will get caught in a vicious circle. When you’re first are trapped in one of these, it’s really hard to get out.
Even small, innocent little children can be manipulating and just as cruel as adults, though grown ups never realise it.

Question 3.) What I liked and disliked about this story:

What I liked about this story was that Elaine at the end finally was brave enough to turn the back on her evil friends and the vicious circle once and for all, instead of having a bad childhood. She realised that her friends had bad influence on her and that she had to get rid of them to move on with her life.
The theme in this story is also great and the story really describes how manipulating children can be, it’s a theme that never will get to old and stuff like what happened in this story will always take place somewhere.
I didn’t dislike this story at all because the story has to be written this way to make it’s point, but the author could have provided us with some more information about some of the characters.

Huckleberry Finn’s childhood was in many ways very special. He grew up without a caring mother and a helpful father. His mother died when he was very young and his father left him to himself. When the other children were at school learning maths and geography, he was out playing and having fun. Nobody was taking care of him, not until the widow, Mrs. Douglas brought him into her house to learn him proper manners.

Here he meets the slave Jim. Jim was always nice to Huckleberry and he treated him very well, Huckleberry did the same for Jim.
Later Huckleberry’s biological father, a Mr. Finn, shows up again in his greed and selfish hunt for some more money to buy alcohol with. He has heard that his son got some money since he helped Mrs. Douglas with towing in some robbers. Mr. Finn later kidnapped Huckleberry in his attempt to get the money.

Short after Huckleberry manages to escape, and he gets to an island were he meets Jim. During their adventures on a raft on the Mississippi River, it grows up a strong, special bond between them. Just like a father-son relationship. Jim always supports Huckleberry, even in the most doubtful situations.
Jim takes much more care of Huckleberry than his biological father did. The bond between them is much more powerful than the bond between Huckleberry and his biological father, which not consist of love but greed and selfishness. Therefore will many critics maybe call Jim Huckleberry Finn’s “true” father. Whether Jim can be classified as Huckleberry’s “true” father or not remains to be seen.

First of all we can start with throwing light over Huckleberry’s real father, Mr. Finn as mentioned earlier. Mr. Finn is not a good person. He left his son to himself when his wife died.
That he’s not a good person primarily comes of that he’s an alcoholic. To get something to drink, he needs money which he can’t get. So, he tries desperately to get more money. He’s heard that his son got 6000$ for tying up some bandits, and he wants to claim this money, to take them out of Huckleberry’s hands. When this didn’t work the easy way, he kidnapped Huckleberry.
He leads his son to a hut, which he is living in for the moment, and locks his child inside it. During the days his father goes to work, but when he comes back he usually is drunk and start hitting his son.
As you can see, Mr. Finn isn’t a good father at all. He left his son at an early age, tries to steal from him and hits him. Not actually the dream father.

Second I want to say a little about Jim. Jim is Mrs. Watson’s slave. He is always nice to Huckleberry and is always there to back him up. He does things that only is good for Huckleberry, like for example hiding the body of Huckleberry’s father for him, not letting him see the dead body since it may hurt him.

When Ms. Watson intends to sell Jim to another person for some money he flies away, and eventually ends up at Jacksons Island where he meet Huckleberry again. Jim is now a so called runaway slave, and since he doesn’t know so much about other places he trust Jim to lead him to a safe place. This may partly be the reason of why he support Huckleberry so much. Since both of them go under the runaway category. But of course he also support Huckleberry because he has been so nice to him and never done anything that would have hurt Jim in any way. The both respect each other as much as they care about each other.

To the last I want to compare these two individuals with each other. Mr. Finn can nearly be said to be completely the opposite of Jim. Huckleberry’s biological father is just a greedy, selfish, and drunk man who just want to steal money from his son since he don’t actually exert himself with earning his own money. Jim anyway, shares everything he has of knowledge about people and stuff like that with Huckleberry. He use his small amount of wisdom and knowledge to educate his “son” the best way he can. Jim shares everything with Huckleberry, but Mr. Finn doesn’t share a thing.

At the end you may say that Mr. Finn wasn’t a good, loving father for Huckleberry. It was Jim who took the father-role and played it, and very well indeed. It was Jim who educated Huckleberry to become the person he is, it was not Mr. Finn. So, I think, that on this one I agree with the critics. Jim is Huckleberry’s “true” father even if he wasn’t his biological father.

Short Answer Questions:

1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first published in: 1884.
2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn can best be described as: a classic and a novel.
3. Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer each received 6000 dollars when they found money that the robbers had hidden in the cave
4. Huck’s father returns because he: has heard that Huck has received some money and he wants them.
5. When Jim first sees Huck Finn on the island, he thinks Huck: is someone looking for him since he is a runaway slave.
6. Jim runs away from Miss Watson because: she intends to sell him to another person.
7.   Huck escapes to Jackson Island and discovers that: Jim has run away from someone too.
8.   Mark Twain’s approach to the issue of racism in Huckleberry Finn is that: all people deserves to have and live a free life even though they have a different skin colour than the majority. He shows this because Huckleberry always is helping Jim out of trouble.

• Mark Twain was born in Florida, Missouri the 30th of November in 1835.
• He was the 6th of totally seven children, where only three survived childhood.
• At the age of four his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, where he grew up. He takes basis in this place in some of his books.
• During the American Civil War he fought for the south states, but he abandoned the army after just two weeks. The war was about whether it should be slavery or not.
• The person behind the pseudonym (pen name) Mark Twain is Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
• Before he started to use Mark Twain as a pseudonym he used Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, when he was writing comics.

• Mark Twain made and published more that 30 books during his lifetime.
• His most known books are the novels “The adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “The adventures of Huckleberry Finn”
• Mark Twain died of a heart-attack the 21st of April in 1910, in Redding, Connecticut.
• Samuel Langhorne Clemens became 74 years old.

I think that Lennie is a person who don’t know how to control his own strength. He doesn’t seem to know that he is so strong which he really is, but for normal people that shouldn’t be a problem to understand. Therefore I think that he’s mentally confused.
He likes to touch things that are soft and hairy, and it gives him a feeling of wellness. In fact the only thing he speaks about is hairy rabbits.
Lennie can’t control his own strength and when something is threatening his future farm with rabbits he may turn violently without knowing it himself. I think that he has a great respect for the man who can let him look after the rabbits, George. Lennie means no harm, but accidents happen. He’s like a child in an adult’s body, not aware of his powers.

To help Lennie I think that Curley and his wife could start with learning him his own strength and that things easily can be destroyed. Afterwards they can say that they appreciate his work on the farm instead of getting mad at him. That would surely make him more self-confident. Making him more self-confident will do that he’s not so afraid of ruining anything, which will make it much better than having an overnervous, mentally sick person working at the farm.

Once upon a time there was a poor employee, who had a gorgeous daughter. One day this man met his rich and highly respected boss. In order to make himself more important than he was, he said that he had a daughter that could make diamonds out of rocks by crushing them. The boss said to the employee that it surely were a great skill to have, and if your daughter is as good as you say, bring her to my office tomorrow and I will put her to the test.

The day after the employee came with his daughter and she was guided into another room filled up with rocks and was then given a sledgehammer. Start to work he said, if these rock aren’t turned into diamonds at sunrise, you must die. Then he left the room, closed the door and locked it. The daughter of the poor employee sat there alone and had no idea of how to make diamonds out of rocks with a sledgehammer. After a while she became more and more terrified and finally she started to cry.

Suddenly the door was opened and in came a little man, a dwarf, and said hello to her and asked her why she was crying so badly.
She answered that she had to make diamonds out of rocks, and that she didn’t have the faintest idea of how to do it.
“What will you give me if I do it for you?”. “My Necklace” she answered. The strange man took the necklace, gripped the sledgehammer and bang, bang, bang, a diamond was made. Afterwords he started with a new rock and bang,bang,bang, a second diamond was made. The kept it going until the morning, then all the rocks were turned into diamonds.

When the boss entered the room the following morning you could literally see his eyes flick around in happiness and astonishment, but his heart were hungry for more in its lust for richness.
He had the beautiful daughter brought into another room filled up with even more rocks and ordered her to convert these rocks into diamonds before sunrise, if she was found of her life. The boss left the room and she was left for her own. She didn’t know how to get out of this dilemma once again and began to cry.
But faith wanted it different also this time. Again the little man appeared and asked her of what she would give him if he did the work again. This time it was her ring who changed owner.
The dwarf set to work and by morning the room was twinkling in diamonds.

The boss were over-happy and wanted even more diamonds, so she was showed into a even larger room filled with rocks. Then he said that she had to crush this into diamonds during the night, and if she succeeded, she should become my wife.
He thought that he couldn’t find a richer wife in the entire world, despite she was the daughter of a poor employee.

When the girl was left alone again, the little man came back for the third time and asked her for what she would give him if he helped her once more. She had nothing left to offer, but he made her promise that if she became the wife of the boss, to give her first child to him. Once again, there was made diamonds out of rocks.

The boss returned as promised by sunrise, and when he found all as he wanted to, he took her in marriage. The poor daughter became a highly respected lady.
A year after the marriage a little child was put to the world. Suddenly the little dwarf stood there again, she had completely forgotten.

He wanted what she had promised but she did not want to give away her child. She offered him everything within richness, but he only wanted the child. At the end he gave her three days to find out his name, if so, she could keep the baby.
In two days she tried to guess his name, she sent messengers all around the country to collect all weird and unusual names, but no one were correct.
At the evening the second night a messenger came home with a name that would change her future completely. He said he had passed a hut high up in the mountain, and it were a fire outside it. Around the fire it were a little funny man dancing around singing: “to-day I bake, to-morrow brew, the next I’ll have the boss wife’s child. Ha, glad am I that no one knew, that Rumpelstiltskin I am styled”.

Of course she was happy about his message, but the messenger had more to tell. He said that soon after he heard the song the whole house burst into flames and that the little man was screaming “Help, Help!”. The man went out of the bushes and helped him to extinguish the flames. Together they saved the house and the little man thanked him and said that he would be forever grateful.

The following morning the little man appeared for a new round with name guessing. Then the little man saw the messenger who had helped him stand beside the lady. He became terrified over what the sound of his name on her lips would do to him, so he chose to say that she could keep the child forever, as long as she didn’t tell anyone else his name.

She didn’t tell anyone his name before a long time after, when her son was about to have his child. Her grandson was named Rumpelstiltskin. Everybody thought that this were a weird name, but she didn’t care. It was only she and the messenger who knew the truth.

If you want to read the true story visit this page:
http://www.umich.edu/~umfandsf/other/ebooks/Grimm/044.txt

The book is above you.
I ran across the street.
You are among friends.
The ball is under the table.
He was standing beside me.
I came into the room just before you did.
You live next to me.
We are in the kitchen.
He started walking towards me.
The children is playing outside the house.

One day every human will come to that point were they will have to realize that money isn’t everything in this life. The most important thing in life is having fun and to be happy, but money would of course make the way to happiness much easier.
Somebody would even say that money is happiness, but I think that happiness is so many, many other things too. Having friends, a good family and fun is for example very important factors to become happy, money would just be the icing on the cake. Many persons think that having money equals with having friends, or rather “buying” friends. These friends who are “bought” are not really loyal friends and they probably just suddenly vanish if the source of money starts to faint away.

The reason why I would have chosen happiness in front of being rich is that I think it’s much more important to do something with your life, to be happy and have friends, instead of being a greedy person with no friends to stick together with, and just sit home and be unsocial while counting your precious money.
Having money isn’t bad, but if you don’t have any to share them with you really don’t have any use of them either. It’s an ultimatum between having money and to be happy, but I surely think that having money without happiness wouldn’t have been a good choice. Happiness is something you share with others and they will of course be happy to share something with you too, everybody likes nice humans who are nice with everybody.

“I define happiness as having the freedom, health and opportunity to do great things for myself and others.” David Cress, Wisconsin, USA