Book Thoughts | Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

I finished reading Of Mice and Men last night. Its very short length belies the emotional impact of Steinbeck’s obliquely named novella. Though I had read it before, some twenty odd years ago, I found myself hazy on the details, and I decided to read it again.

And I think I may read it yet again. Not because it is one of those stories that will inspire or lift me, but because it moves and hurts. In just a few short pages, Steinbeck creates characters that are sympathetic, even though they are removed from my by almost a century and by several social and economic classes. Here we have George and Lennie, itinerant laborers, hoping to find enough money to break the cycle of boom and bust; the lonely African-American in the West, equal, but separate; Candy, the aging ranch hand, who is one step from useless and fearing cast off; Curly, suspicious and jealous, wearing high-heeled boots to compensate for his self-doubt; Slim, the experienced mule drive and really the only person who seems at peace with what he is; and Curly’s wife, the only woman in the book, but not even named. Each has a moment to feel potent and real, and then is subsumed into the symphony of Steinbeck’s tragedy, each having a hope torn asunder in a moment.

I don’t know quite what it all means. I don’t know what Steinbeck was saying. But there is a terrible beauty in the tragedy it spells out in just a few short pages that leaves one feeling the pain that must have been all too common in the years after the Great Depression. As a snapshot of an era, of one gone by the wayside, it feels like a glance, a glimpse through gently parted curtains, into what must have been the daily drama of the day.

I think leads me to why I would read it again, someday: to remind me how lucky, how blessed, how fortunate I am, not because of many efforts of my own, but so much because of the accident of my birth, when and where and to whom it happened.

Title: Of Mice and Men
Author: John Steinbeck
Genre: Fiction
Release Date: 1937
Format: Paperback
Pages: 119

They are an unlikely pair: George is "small and quick and dark of face"; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a "family," clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation.

Laborers in California's dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they land jobs on a ranch in the Salinas Valley, the fulfillment of their dream seems to be within their grasp. But even George cannot guard Lennie from the provocations of a flirtatious woman, nor predict the consequences of Lennie's unswerving obedience to the things George taught him.