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Of Mice and Men is a novella by John Steinbeck, first published in 1937, which tells the tragic story of George and Lennie, two displaced Anglo migrant farm workers in California during the Great Depression (1929-1939). The story is set on a ranch few miles from Soledad in the Salinas Valley.
The novels title The title of the story refers to a line in the Scots poem To a Mouse by the national poet of Scotland, Robert Burns: "The best-laid schemes o mice an men, Gang aft agley" (Eng: "Often go awry"). Theoretically, the mouse is Lennie who is lost in the big world in which he has to find a way to survive. The man refers to George who takes the mouse in and shows it the way. Like a real mouse Lennie gets in trouble being in places he shouldn’t be, and doing things he shouldn’t be doing. George is there to be the disciplinarian to the mouse (Lennie) so that he doesn’t get into such mischief. Another interpretation could be taken from the inspiration Burns drew for the poem. Burns was plowing in a field when he found the plow had destroyed a mouse in its nest burrowed into the field. The incident—the destruction of this mouse and its home when it surely seemed to the mouse that its life had been carefully laid out—caused him to reflect on the ability for the most carefully-planned ambitions and hopes of the mouse—and man, in the larger sense—to go awry with a simple change of fate. The events in the novel tamper with the hopes, dreams, and ambitions of Lennie and George set out from the beginning, and become the vessel through which Steinbeck illustrates the book's themes of the plight of mankind and his dreams. Plot summary Lennie is a large, physically strong man with the mind of a child, and George is a smaller, feeble bodied man with quick wit. The men are wandering ranch workers who travel together in search of any available opportunities to earn money. Lennie depends on George as does George on Lennie for all different times in their travels. The ideal objective of most ranch workers is to amass a sizeable fortune and eventually purchase a small farm, and "live offa the fatta the lan'." Lennie is driven to reach this objective by the prospect of "tending the rabbits". However, this goal appears to be nothing more than a distant dream until Candy, another worker on the farm, offers to contribute his savings for a place on the farm. While subjected to the loneliness and mediocrity of the life they presently lead, George and Lennie's prospect of their own farm attracts yet another hopeful, Crooks, the Negro stable buck. Despite their best efforts, however, the dream begins to collapse, completely falling apart when Lennie accidentally kills Curley's wife by breaking her neck. He said to himself, "I done a bad thing. I done another bad thing." It was foreshadowed in the beginning of the book, as in the last ranch they worked at, Lennie began to touch a woman's dress, and they were going to be lynched until George hid with Lennie, and later on escaped. After Curley's wife, who is a promiscuous woman with a wandering eye, dies in his arms, Lennie escapes to the river where the story had begun, the place where George advised him to hide should he ever get into trouble (Note the circular ending: it suggests that the workers are trapped in the cycle forever). To spare Lennie from Curley's revenge, which would entail much pain on Lennie's part, George quickly kills Lennie with a Luger pistol which he had stolen from Carlson earlier. He does this by coaxing Lennie with a description of the dream of their own farm, which captivates his attention and allows George to press the pistol to the back of Lennie's unsuspecting head and shoot him. Slim then takes George for a drink to settle his nerves. The last line of the book is delivered by Carlson, the ranch worker who kills Candy's old dog in a fashion similar to Lennie's killing (which foreshadows his death.) He says to Curley, "Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin' them two guys?" reflecting the fact that both characters never learned the value of compassion. Characters in "Of Mice and Men" Film versions The novel has been made into five films: A 1939 film, Of Mice and Men starring Lon Chaney Jr. (Lennie) and Burgess Meredith (George), directed by Lewis Milestone A 1970 TV movie A Turkish 1975 TV movie A 1981 TV movie, Of Mice and Men starring Randy Quaid (Lennie) and Robert Blake (George), Ted Neeley (Curley), directed by Reza Badiyi A 1992 film, Of Mice and Men, starring John Malkovich (Lennie) and Gary Sinise (George), directed by Gary Sinise. Opera Carlisle Floyd wrote an opera based on this novel in 1970. The opera features The Narrator, a character who is not found in the book. Plays Stage adaptations have also been produced. The original production was produced by Sam H. Harris, and it opened on November 23rd, 1937, in the Music Box Theatre on Broadway. It ran for 207 performances, and starred Wallace Ford as George and Broderick Crawford as Lennie. Also of note, the role of Crooks was performed by Leigh Whipper, the first African-American member of the Actors' Equity Association. Whipper repeated his role in the 1939 film version. It was chosen as Best Play of the 1937-38 season by the New York Drama Critics' Circle. (source: Critics' Prize Plays, World Publishing Company, 1945) The play was famously revived in a 1974 Broadway production staring Kevin Conway as George and James Earl Jones as Lennie. Noted stage actress Pamela Blair played Curley's Wife in this production. In the early 1990s, the Steppenwolf Theatre Company mounted a production with Gary Sinise and John Malkovich playing the roles of George and Lennie respectively. Controversy The novel was banned from various American school libraries or curricula in 1993 and 1994 for "promoting euthanasia" but remains required reading in many other American high school and middle school English courses. Also, many students are studying the novel for GCSE English Literature in England, Northern Ireland and Wales, Standard Grade in Scotland and the Leaving Certificate in Ireland. It is also studied in several high schools in Victoria, Australia as part of the leadup to the completion of a VCE (Victorian Certificate of Education). It is a prescribed English text for the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme and is studied by Maltese Student taking their English A Level or Intermediate Level exams for their Matriculation Certificate. Because of the novel's content it has been the frequent target of censors and appears on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000 at number six. * Trivia | ||||||||
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