Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Usually I link one book to another as I read, following a thread through literature made of references or themes. But the only connection between Middlemarch and Of Mice and Men is the alliteration in the titles. After reading Middlemarch, I wanted something shorter, a palette cleanser, and I chanced upon this on my bookshelf. I didn’t realize I owned a copy of Of Mice and Men. I’m thinking Jim might have brought it home from school when he packed up his classroom after retiring in June. But he doesn’t remember it either. I also didn’t realize it was such a short book: a hundred and three pages in the edition I read. I was expecting a length more like East of Eden, which I’ve not read. The Steinbeck I have read I thoroughly enjoyed. Grapes of Wrath (1939) is a wonderful book. I read it forty years ago. I read In Dubious Battle (1936) more recently because Barack Obama recommended it; I can recommend it, too, though it’s not the masterpiece Grapes of Wrath is. Of Mice and Men came in 1937, between those two, making a pretty remarkable California farmworkers trilogy. I also read Travels With Charley (1962) a fictionalized memoir of Steinbeck traveling around the U.S. in a camper with his dog.

Of Mice and Men is a tightly constructed book. The plot unfolds stepwise. There’s one consistent line of rising tension. The later action is foreshadowed expertly. The characters are all of a type: laborers on a farm, but are delineated individually and believably, if slightly cliched. The style is realism, but exaggerated just enough to make good drama. I imagine the novel being taught as a useful model for a creative writing class.

Of Mice and Men takes place in Soledad, California, a coastal valley farm town east of Monterey. The time is contemporary to the writing: the 1930s. We’re introduced to the two main characters first in a kind of prelude. George and Lennie have left work on a farm after some trouble and traveled to take work on another farm. The opening scene has the two camping by the side of a river. Lennie is physically big, ironically named Lennie Small, but mentally deficient and dependent on George. George is a dreamer. He hopes to earn enough money that eventually he and Lennie could buy a small farm of their own. “An’ live off the fatta the lan’,” (p. 13) as Lennie has learned to shout excitedly when George narrates his dream. Lenny is especially taken with the part of the dream where the two of them keep a rabbit hutch and George is going let Lennie take care of the rabbits. Lennie loves the feel of soft things. The trouble they got into in their previous work, we learn later, was that Lenny grabbed hold of a girl’s dress just to feel it. Then, when the girl tried to pull away, Lennie, in his panic, gripped tighter. Lennie also has a dead mouse he plays with that Lennie killed by petting it too hard. A sense of dread immediately arises, with just enough hope that this time things will turn out differently and George’s dream will come true for him and Lennie. But, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men…,” as the Robert Burns poem warns us.

After that prelude, the action turns to the farm where George and Lennie get work loading bags of barley. Here there are only two settings: the bunkhouse, and the stable where there’s also a small living quarters for the stable hand, called Crooks because of his injured back. We never see the workers in the field. Steinbeck says he structured the book like a play, which is evident, and indeed the novel has been presented as a play as well as a movie.

In the bunkhouse, scene two of Act One, but actually an unnumbered chapter two, we’re introduced to the other characters. There’s Slim, the wise and trusted foreman of the team. There’s Curley, the boss’ son, a pugnacious, troublemaker with a chip on his shoulder. He immediately takes a disliking to Lennie, identifying Lennie as an outsider because of his size and his mental handicap. George tells Lennie to stay out of Curley’s way and also tells Lenny that if anything goes wrong at the farm, that Lennie should go back to that spot along the river where they had camped and George will find him. Curley’s newly married to the only woman in the novel, who isn’t given a name. She’s got a roving eye for the men, which infuriates Curley and is another danger point George notices and warns Lennie about. There’s also a man named Carlson. And an old man named Candy who can no longer work in the field but manages to stay on “swamping” out the buildings. Candy has an old dog. Slim also has a dog, named Lulu, who just gave birth to pups. Lennie who likes soft things covets a pup for himself and George thinks a pup, when it’s old enough, might be able to withstand Lennie’s rough handling.

The action intensifies. Sure enough, Curley and Lennie get in a fight. Lennie grabs Curley’s fist and squeezes so hard he breaks Curley’s hand. Carlson complains about the smell of Candy’s old dog and convinces Candy that it’s time to put the old dog down. Carlson takes the dog outside and shoots the dog in the back of the head with his Lugar. It’s done off-stage, so to speak, and there’s a great couple of pages of the men in the bunkhouse trying to talk normally while they wait to hear the retort from Carlson’s gun. Candy overhears George, once again, telling Lennie his dream of the little farm they can get once they’ve saved enough money, and Candy says that he’s got money saved and asks if he could come into the scheme with them. Suddenly, the dream seems close. There’s hope. Just another month of work and the three will have the money they need for a place that George already knows about.

Act Two takes place in Crooks’ living quarters in the stable. Most of the men, including George have gone into town for drinking and women. Lennie, who had been in the stable petting the pup that is promised to him, notices the light in Crooks’ place and comes to talk to him. Candy comes in, too, and the two of them talk about their plan to buy a place of their own. Crooks is skeptical. “You guys is just kidding’ yourself. You’ll talk about it a hell of a lot, but you won’t get no land. You’ll be a swamper here till they take you out in a box. Hell, I seen too many guys. Lennie here’ll quit an’ be on the road in two, three weeks. Seems like ever’ guy got land in his head” (p. 72). But Crooks is lonely, living alone in the stable room, and for a minute he’s charmed by the dream and imagines he could come in with the other guys as a fourth. Curley’s wife comes in spreading her trouble.

Act III takes place in the stable itself. Lennie has killed his pup by petting it too hard. He’s worried that when George finds out he won’t let Lennie tend the rabbits. All the other guys are outside playing horseshoes. Curley’s wife comes in and sits down to talk with Lennie. Lonely, she says. Lennie confesses about the pup and how he’s attracted to soft things. Curley’s wife says that her hair is soft and lets Lennie touch it. But he grabs too tight and won’t let go. Curley’s wife starts to yell but Lennie puts his hand over her mouth afraid that George would come in and find out about the dead pup. But Lennie can’t control himself and he breaks her neck. Lennie flees. The men come in and find the dead body, first Candy, then George. They know right away who did it and they know that Curley will hunt Lennie down and kill him. They organize a posse. Curley has a shotgun. Carlson goes to get his Lugar and finds it missing. George joins the posse to prove he’s one of the guys, but hoping to find Lennie first and maybe get Lennie institutionalized instead of lynched.

The final scene is back at the Salinas river. Lennie is there. George finds him first, knowing where to look. The rest of the men are still a ways off but coming closer. George does what we all know he will do following the track of the novel. He speaks soothingly to Lennie and then raises the Lugar to the back of Lennie’s head and shoots. The men arrive and assume that Lennie had stolen the gun and George had wrested it from him and killed him in self-defense. But Slim knows the truth. He says, “You hadda, George. I swear you hadda.”

I mentioned that Curley’s wife is un-named in the book. Un-named, also, is Candy’s old dog that gets shot earlier. Although the dog that gives birth to the litter of puppies is named, Lulu, the pup that Lennie chooses and eventually kills has no name. Nor did Lennie name the dead mouse he has in his pocket in the opening chapter. Of all the deaths in the book, only one concerns a named character: Lennie’s. Although Curley’s wife is an individualized character, keeping her nameless, I suspect, was Steinbeck’s way of diminishing that murder and keeping the focus on Lennie and George.

The relationship of George and Lennie intrigued me. It intrigues the other characters in the book, too, who are used to men coming and going alone, not partnered. There’s no hint of homosexuality in their friendship. They aren’t brothers or cousins, even. They’ve simply known each other since childhood. George tells Slim, “But you get used to goin’ around with a guy an’ you can’t get rid of him (p. 39). Lennie can’t take care of himself. And George is both annoyed at being saddled with him, but also enjoys having a person dependent on him. The loneliness of living is a theme throughout, for Crooks, Candy, and Curley’s wife. I kept thinking that Lennie and George’s relationship is like that of Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy, with even some similarities in their characters, although it’s Ratso who becomes dependent on Joe and dies at the end of Midnight Cowboy.

Of Mice and Men is one of the most banned books in America. The character of Crooks is a black man. He’s isolated from the other, white, characters, and regularly called buck and nigger. And in the scene with Curley’s wife she asserts her power as a white woman over him, threatening him with lynching. Although it’s uncomfortable to read, I don’t have a problem with a book reflecting the truth of its time and setting. It’s equally a marker of how times change that all the farmworkers are white men, none are Latino or women. Grapes of Wrath is also an often banned book for its critique of the labor economy and it’s unblinking portrayal of poverty.

Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in 1962. He died in 1968