On Tuesday in class we started out by passing around our one-page compositions about relationships in Of Mice and Men, and then we passed those in to the teacher. Then we brought up the topic of our big essay over Of Mice and Men and Lords of Discipline. We then split into groups of 3 and sketched some pictures of what key systems affected the relationships in each book. It was a really helpful exercise because it got the whole class brainstorming about possible ideas of systems to include in our essays. Finally, we took some quick notes on the formatting of our essays and made sure we all knew what each body paragraph consists of, how to integrate quotes, etc.
I got a lot of things out of these discussions in class. I really figured out how the systems in both books affect the relationships of each character-for example, in Of Mice and Men, the workers are the ones who really hold up the ranch and all that is produced there, but they get hardly anything from working so hard. Also, in Lords of Discipline, there might be more plebes than there are cadre members, but the cadre members and all the upperclassmen/veterans seem to have much more power because of the way they are banded together. The plebes, although a large group, have not come together in a true fellowship yet, so this makes them weaker. I got a lot of interesting ideas for my paper, and this activity really broadened my view of the intricate systems in both books. I thought the activity was very effective.
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