On Friday, October 25, teaching assistant Isabelle Davy was tasked to investigate a “troubling” weekly response paper.
Davy, a T.A. for ENG140 (Literature for our Time) calmly graded dozens of responses to Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men--until she reached second-year Aidan Jupe’s.
The following is only an excerpt from Jupe’s discussion post which exceeded the assignment’s 300-word limit by roughly 4500 words.
Jupe was asked to assess how the setting of Steinbeck’s novella Of Mice and Men “reflected the roles and sensitivities” of the characters. This is what he came up with:
Setting? I’ll give you a setting. The fucking barn. Scene: Couple bales of hay, one dog, one Lennie. The two cuddle after a heavy day of work, we’re peaceful as all hell, ‘til SNAP! Dude, breaks the puppy’s neck by fucking petting it. Absolute fucking unit Lennie is! Bud!
But you know we’re not done yet. In comes Curley’s wife. Lennie’s kinda freaking cuz of the whole dead dog thing but he’s bein lowkey about it. She offers for him to stroke her hair so he gives it a shot: One stroke, two strokes, CRUNCH! There goes another neck!
But who ends up killing Lennie? Not Candy. Not Curley. Fucking George. ‘Ain’t gonna be no more trouble,’ George says, right before he gives it to Lennie RIGHT IN THE BACK OF THE DOME.
10/10. Classic Steinbeck.
Though initially struggling to find leads to the hot-blooded response, Davy believes she found its origin in tutorial, after noticing a mysterious white powder coating the edge of Jupe’s Hunter S. Thompson bookmark.