Of Mice and Men: John Steinbeck’s Tragedy of Friendship and Dreams
One of the most important American novels of the twentieth century, by the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Grapes of Wrath. John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, published in 1937, tells the story of George and Lennie, two farmhands in Depression-era California who travel from ranch to ranch in search of work, sharing one dream: a place of their own, with land and animals.
Author: John Steinbeck (1902–1968), Nobel Prize in Literature 1962
Title: Of Mice and Men (1937)
Format: English paperback (Penguin Modern Classics), 128 pages
Scope: Short novel set on a ranch in California’s Salinas Valley during the Great Depression
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0141023570 (ASIN 0141023570)
George and Lennie
George Milton is small, alert and clever. Lennie Small is huge and strong but has the mind of a child, and he is always getting into trouble. George can do nothing but protect him and keep going, moving from one job to the next. Eventually they find work on a ranch in the Salinas Valley, where their hopes begin to look almost possible.
A Universal Tragedy
This is a universal tragedy about friendship, poverty, discrimination and dreams. Steinbeck gives a voice to people with nothing but the clothes they wear and a shared vision of a better life, and he shows how fragile that vision is when cruelty, misunderstanding and Lennie’s own strength get in the way.
The Best-Laid Schemes
The title comes from Robert Burns’s poem "To a Mouse": "The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley", often go wrong. That line sums up the book. George and Lennie’s dream of a small farm of their own, where Lennie can tend the rabbits, is shared for a moment by the ageing ranch hand Candy and even by Crooks, the Black stable hand forced to live apart from the others. For a few pages it seems possible. Steinbeck makes us want it as badly as they do.
Loneliness on the Ranch
Almost every character is isolated: Candy with his old dog, Crooks in his room in the barn, and Curley’s wife, who is never given a name and has no one to talk to on a ranch full of men. George and Lennie’s friendship stands out precisely because it is so rare in that world. Steinbeck, who had worked on ranches in the Salinas Valley as a young man, knew these men and their rootless lives at first hand.
A Play-Novella
Steinbeck designed the book to be read like a play, with scenes built around dialogue and few changes of place, and it was staged on Broadway in 1937, the year of publication. It has been filmed several times, notably in 1939 and in 1992 with Gary Sinise and John Malkovich. It is also one of the books most often challenged in American schools, for its language and its ending.
Where to Go Next
Readers moved by it can continue with The Grapes of Wrath (1939), Steinbeck’s great novel of Dust Bowl migrants, or the longer family saga East of Eden (1952). At barely a hundred pages, Of Mice and Men is the best introduction to his work.
A Book for Every Age
Teenagers often meet it at school; adults who reread it tend to find it even sadder. Its simple language hides great care in every scene.
Why Read It Now
At little more than a hundred pages, Of Mice and Men can be read in an evening and remembered for a lifetime. It is a perfect entry point to Steinbeck before tackling The Grapes of Wrath or East of Eden, and a reminder of how much a great writer can say in very few words.
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