In the novella of Mice and Men and the TV show Fargo, the idea of masculinity and its surrounding ideas are played with allot. From the idea of a male partnership to animal symbolism, these texts show similar events happening to similar collections of people, however, these two texts are different in the audience that they are appealing towards. In Steinbeck’s novella, it is very much a piece of its time, being centered around the great depression and a man's struggle to find work in these hard times, very much reflecting on Steinbeck’s own life. Whereas Fargo focuses more on the ideals of the American dream, following a lowly ‘failure’ of a man as his life gets ripped from him.

The idea of the traditional Lone Wanderer is portrayed in both …show more content…
Howley and Bernstein illustrate the idea of Lester being a fish, this is first shown after Lester murders his wife when you see the poster that sais ‘what if you are right and they are wrong’. This is appearing as Lester is shown up until this point as a cowardly fish, with his wife threatening to leave him and even saying that she would have been better off without him. This leads him to crack in which you see him accidently kill his wife and call the mysterious man he met at the hospital, who then became Lester’s idol of sorts with him being Lester’s image of the perfect man, when this happens you can feel his change from cowardly to his sudden surge of uncontrollable anger, similarly to a shark. With Fargo always playing with the idea of the food chain, this shows the evolution of his character from goldfish to a shark, which illustrates the idea that Lester could only ever be one of two kinds of men, a dimwitted small man who was a failure in his partner's eyes, or a smart strong crazed murderer, both of these are tragically relatable to the common viewer and also allows them to feel sorry for Lester as they have often met people or family members who feel like no matter what they do nothing works. This is mirrored in of Mice and Men and in this novella Lennie is portrayed in a very similar way however he is instead shown as a hulking brute with the intellect of a four-year-old. Throughout the