Uzbekistan state university of world languages english philology faculty

Real versus Fantasy

Steinbeck takes the time between his social attacks to pay tribute to the land. He romanticizes the landscape by painting a magnificent picture of the scenery that not only the reader can imagine himself being in, but he can also identify another purpose with the novels. The images of nature and of the beautiful landscapes that the characters find themselves in serve as a contrast to what Steinbeck is telling us about the Great Depression and all the corruption that follows. The opening paragraph of Of Mice and Menis perhaps the best example of this: "A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool."
He draws up a striking image in the opening lines that the reader can both picture it vividly and at the same time see that Steinbeck's descriptions of nature work out as a contrast between the real and the fantasy worlds. In the real world we find everything that has gone wrong. We have a corrupt political system, huge gaps between social classes and people being taken advantage of. The Real world centers on the Great Depression and its effects on individuals and families.
In the fantasy world, however, we get a sense of nostalgia as we are reminded of simpler times where everything is perfect and everyone is safe. Steinbeck introduces this world in several ways. It can either be his poetic descriptions of nature, a dream which the characters are pursuing or it can even be an actual safe place which the characters can escape to. Todd M. Lieber states that in a few of his novels, Steinbeck gave his characters a special spot where they could escape to and be safe. It could either be a hidden cave, a house or a thicket in the willows (264). These places provided shelter for when the characters were in trouble and needed to think or hide out .These places seemed to somehow be connected to the characters. Steinbeck never revealed why he chose to include these relationships between the place and the characters, but Lieber believes that it had implied a relationship between the places and the deeper parts of the human psyche. He mentions how Ethan's cave links up with the "dark places" of his consciousness as an example of this theory (264). This theory could also help explain the connection between George and Lennie and the land that they intended to buy. Their dream of owning their own land was a subject of the more positive aspects of the human mind, and signified their longing to progress in the world.
The characters were living in a cruel world, and that is why the idea of the fantasy world became so important. Its effects are strongest in Of Mice and Men and Tortilla Flat. In the aforementioned novel we have the safe place were Lennie eventually goes to hide out in, and we also have the pair's dream which is the main driving force of their lives and whenever thing start to get too real for them. The two men can just go there in their minds and picture the house, the land and the rabbits. Tortilla Flat is special in the way that the almost the entire novel takes place in one of these special places. The paisanos have their little place which happened to be Danny's house. When they are located in the house they do not have to worry about the fact that they do not have any money, and they certainly do not need to think about all the corruption and anguish which is going on in the real world. The idea of saving up their money is lost to them as all they need is friendship and company.
The adventures of the paisanos at Tortilla Flat can be linked to another great tale of heroism, fantasy and adventure. Steinbeck was a fan of Sir Thomas Malory, and at one point in his career he wrote a retelling of his tales about King Arthur and Lancelot. This work was not released until after Steinbeck’s death. One thing Steinbeck admired about Malory was the way his characters were portrayed, especially Lancelot and he used a similar combination of the consciousness of the human frailty and heroic imperatives of behavior when he created the characters in The Winter of Our Discontent (Ditzky 634-635). The paisanos at Tortilla Flat can be seen as representations of the Knights at the Round Table with Danny taking the place of King Arthur. The men go on with their lives living in their fantasy world and whenever they come across a friend who needs help, each one of them is quick to offer their assistance and shelter as well. The men are not as classy and respectable as the Knights were but the resemblance to Malory's tale is clear none the less.
This is a concept often used in the Hollywood musical. If for example we were to look at The Wizard of Oz we can see that this is one of the major themes of the movie. In it we have a young girl who is living in a dark and depressing place and dreams of going away to a more magical and colorful world. However, once she gets that wish fulfilled when she arrives in Oz she figures out that there is no place like home. Even though life on the farm in Kansas was pretty cruel at times, she was still surrounded by family and friends. In a similar way, that is a part of the charm of Steinbeck's novels. If they are analyzed thoroughly, it becomes clear that he did not write them for the single purpose of ranting and moaning about how horrible things in the country were but rather that he wanted the reader to take something out of it by having the two contrasting worlds. He wanted them to see that if they searched within themselves, they would see that there was still hope. Steinbeck wanted to motivate the nation and make them see that the opportunity to change could be found in each of the nation's citizens. George gives up at the end of Of Mice and Men and decides that his dream, his safe place, is gone forever after he is forced to kill Lennie. Even though he still has Candy and could have achieved his dream, he does not look for that path. The
reason most likely is that he loved Lennie too much and because of that fact does not allow himself to take a chance on something new (Cardullo 21). Ethan Hawley on the other hand, as he is getting ready to give up and commit suicide, does follow this idea and finds within himself the beacon of hope he needed, his daughter, and chooses not to end his life but decides to fight on.
We can derive from this that even though it is easier and perhaps more fun to live in the fantasy world, it is the real one that defines us. It is easy for the characters to be inside their heads all the time but it was what they did outside their dreams that really mattered. Surviving in the real world made them stronger, smarter and had profound effects on them and those are some of the morals Steinbeck wanted his readers to absorb. Being able to escape into a better place was an important thing but the characters had to be able to take something from that stay and apply it to the real world. That was the point of having the real and the fantasy world coexist in the novels. If people want to change a community they must first change the lives of its citizens, which is one thing that Steinbeck to be a duty of the writer as he makes clear in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement." His novels inspired people and made them want to fight for changes in the community. This was extremely important during the Great Depression and as a result great advantages were achieved with the labor laws.
Steinbeck had high hopes for the future and mentions in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech that "Man is our greatest hazard and our only hope", a statement which Lesleigh Patton claims not only to show his optimism and faith in man but also how he had a paradoxical view on the world (180), which could very well be explained by this aforementioned of the two conflicting worlds located within the novels.