Compare and Contrast Post #3: Levels of Literary Analysis

     I didn't particularly enjoy either of these author's writing styles.  They tell a very fluid and well built story but I find that it was too much of a narrative for me.  Each book simply stated what happened in the story, and what the main character was thinking occasionally.  I enjoy novels that dwell on the actions of the story, extending beyond the thoughts of the character and diving into complex ideas and how they affect the characters.  For example, in Of Mice and Men, I would have appreciated a section of the introduction be devoted to defining George and Lennie's relationship, who benefits from what parts of it, how it formed, etc.  While these things could be gleaned from intense literary analysis, I find that it makes for a better story if it is built directly into the novel.
     One of the things I found interesting about both of these novels is the length of the book.  Both books barely top 100 pages each, yet they are extremely famous novels and are considered classics.  I used to think that for a book to be a classic, it had to be very long and cover absolutely everything about the story, such as War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.  However, a book like War and Peace explains absolutely everything in the novel.  Books like Night and Of Mice and Men, however, leave the interpretation to you.  Depending on how deep of a literary analysis you perform, Of Mice and Men could be about friendship, dealing with mental disabilities, or even the dueling idealogies of logic and spirit.  Night could be about surviving hardships, determination, adolescence, or the false hope of putting faith in religion.  These books could be all these things and more.  On the surface, Of Mice and Men is about a farmhand and his mentally disabled friend. Night is about a boy and his father surviving the holocaust.  But they transcend these simple stories and become so much more.  This is what a true classic is defined as.