OF MICE AND MEN

Of Mice and Men is a novel by John Steinbeck about Lennie and George, migrant workers during the Great Depression.

George and Lennie, having walked a long way, stop at a pool by the Salinas River. They are off to take up work at a nearby ranch. They have had to leave their previous work for some, as yet to be explained, reason to do with Lennie.  It is clear that Lennie is slow to understand. He has been keeping a dead mouse to ‘pet’. George makes him get rid of it. We learn that they left Weed because Lennie had touched a girl’s dress, she’d yelled out, and they’d had to hide in a ditch to escape angry townsfolk.  George tells Lennie a story he has obviously told before about how one day they plan to have their own little farm.  George makes Lennie promise to meet him at the pool if there’s trouble.

George and Lennie start work at the farm.  They meet the other ranch hands, the boss’s aggressive son Curley, and Curley’s wife who comes into the bunk house and flirts with them. Lennie is attracted to Curley’s wife and George is worried. George makes Lennie promise to meet him by the pool if there is any trouble. They also meet Slim, in charge of the horses, who is a man with natural authority

George reveals to Slim why they were ‘run out’ of Weed. Slim gives Lennie a puppy from his own dog’s litter. Carlson, a farm hand, convinces Candy, an old man who cleans up around the farm, to let his aged dog be shot.  Candy overhears George and Lennie’s plan for their own farm and offers to put in half the money if they will let him join them. Curley comes in and starts a fight with Lennie, hitting him until George tells Lennie to fight back. Lennie breaks Curley’s hand. Slim makes Curley say that his hand was injured in an accident.

While the other ranch hands go out to the local town Lennie enters the hut of Crooks, a crippled stable hand.  Candy also appears and they tell Crooks about their dream for the farm. They are interrupted by Curley’s wife who laughs at them and threatens Crooks with a charge of rape when he tells her to leave.  Later, Lennie kills the pup he has been given, not knowing his own strength.

Lennie tries to bury the puppy in the straw in the barn.  Curley’s wife comes in and they talk, and she asks him to stroke her hair.  She panics when she feels Lennie’s strength, and in grabbing her he breaks her neck by accident.  When the body is found it is obvious Lennie is the killer.  A hunt is started for him, with Curley keen to be the one who shoots Lennie.

George realises Lennie could not bear life in prison, and also can’t stand the thought of him being lynched by Curley and the others. George finds Lennie by the pool where they had agreed to meet if there was trouble. He talks to Lennie about their dream farm, and then shoots him just before the others arrive. Slim comforts George and tells him he had no choice.