Word: halfwits
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...realism break ground and run for the affectionate softnesses of rosy romanticism. Some have termed it "a poetic idyll," some "stark" or "tragic" or "harrowing" or have used infinite combinations of all these terms. Whatever its effect on individuals, the play tells the story of Lennie, a monstrous halfwit, who absent-mindedly crushes the life out of small rodents because he likes to feel their fur; before the final act has run its macabre course, Lennie has so perfected the fine art of strong arm caressing that he smothers the boss's daughter in a pile...
George and Lennie were ranch hands. George was small, wiry, tough, shrewd; Lennie was enormous, floppy-looking but Herculean, and a halfwit. George and Lennie were pals. Lennie was always getting them into trouble, losing them jobs, getting them run out of town because he liked to pet things - mice, little girls, rabbits. Not conscious of his blundering strength, Lennie was apt to kill what he petted. George kept him in line as well as he could by bawling him out, threatening to leave him, telling him a beautiful fairy story about how they would save enough money...
...improbable coincidence is woven so elaborately and so ingeniously that terrified suspense bangs on the turn of each ironical development. Ghastly irony is this drama's most lethal weapon, and it is called into play so effectively and so frequently that the unhappy spectator is harrowed sick. A forlorn halfwit, for example, driven out of his warm shelter by the gangster villain, picks up a cigarette butt discarded by that villain, and by lighting it unconsciously gives a signal that draws fire from the villain's underling and thereby kills the villain...
...British War Secretary Alfred Duff Cooper. Reason: Mr. Duff Cooper said fortnight ago that the European situation is "far more critical today than in 1914" (TIME, June 22). Cried Lord Ponsonby: "He should be arrested as a deliberate, dangerous and disgraceful scaremonger! He has shown himself to be a halfwit. The only fit place for him is Broadmoor! [asylum for the criminally insane...
Screaming, fighting like a wildcat, he was carried to Ciechanow police station and soon identified as Casimir Tocinski, 9. He was physically far more mature than his age. His mother, a halfwit, herds cows in summer, sleeps in the barns of friendly farmers during the winter. Her son was taken to Warsaw, where psychiatrists reported him "a complete idiot possessing nothing but animal instincts." In the back country farmers crossed themselves and knew that doctors could do nothing to help Casimir Tocinski...