John Steinbeck’s of Mice and Men as an Elegy of Friendship: An Absurdist Study of Human Condition

Abstract

This study is specifically concerned with the representation of the tragic devastation of human inter-personal relationship as a consequence of catastrophic economic and ecological crisis in America through the 1930s. Beyond the revelation of the pathetic devastation of family society, life, dream, and hopes of the people the most significantly, it depicts the obliteration of special individual relationship like friendship. To prove the thesis statement, data for this research were collected from textual reading and analytical library research. The primary and secondary data were reviewed focusing authentic, academic, and commercial references. On the basis of the results of this dissertation, it can be concluded that the novel is basically a reflection of absurdist human condition lamenting on the collapse of human dreams, hopes, and broken relationship. Elegy is a literary vehicle used to vent human experiences, feelings, and perceptions as a response to the loss of nearest and dearest person and thing. Absurdism, as a school of thought, refers meaningfully meaningless void situation created from the conflict between human’s futile efforts to search for meaning and the nonsensical hostile universe.