Recall The Past By Passing Through Time And Space

As a remarkable American novelist and Nobel Prize winner, John Steinbeck enjoys a high international reputation. His works are continuously spreading across the world and translated into a variety of languages. Among the works, Of Mice and Men is one of his representative works, which is very different from the works of other contemporary writers in terms of title selection, writing style, content selection and narrative approaches. However, compared with his later novel The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men has not attracted enough attention it deserves. Most of the critics read the novel just concerning about the issues of the loneliness, friendship, the American Dream and so on, but few of them think about the social and historical issues concerned within this novel. This paper attempts to employ New Historicism as the theoretical framework to interpret Of Mice and Men.The thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter One is an introduction of the novel, the literature review, the aim of study and the literature theory applied, eatablishing the theoretical framework and the argumentation structure of the thesis. Chapter Two focuses on the historicity of Of Mice and Men. This novel makes a reproduction of a true portrayal of the contemporary American history and society during the Great Depression, thus actively participates in the reconstruction of the history. Chapter Three elaborates upon the textuality of Of Mice and Men by analyzing the novel’s characteristics of dramatization, distinctive language and intertextuality for fabricating the history. Chapter Four mainly applies Stephen Greenblatt’s “subversion and containment” to interpreting the theme of the novel that discloses the discontent with the American society and the discontent is finally repressed. Chapter Five is the conclusion which points out that the novel Of Mice and Men reproduces and reconstructs the miserable history of the toiling laborers during the Great Depression in America, which is enlightening for later generations.Through the interpretation from the perspective of New Historicism, readers can not only further understand the interaction between cultural, social and historical factors reflected in Of Mice and Men, but also deeply comprehend the theme of dissatisfaction with American social system and subversion of dominant culture, which, at the same time, arouses the reader’s concern and sympathy for the living conditions of the laborers and their deep thinking about modern society.