In the novel Of mice and men (1937) John Steinbeck describes a man’s trying to accomplish his own dream. The tragic story tells about two ranch workers in the USA. In the novel Steinbeck touches on such comprehensions as dreams, guilt and empathy. The book is based on Steinbeck's own experiences.
John Steinbeck was born in 1902 in a welfare family in California. In the summers during the 1920:s, he worked at neighbor ranches, sometimes together with migrant workers. He got to know the other aspects of life than his family had – the life of migrant workers. He got to learn the darker side of human nature, too. The title for the book is taken from a poem by Robert Burns To a mouse: “The best laid schemes of mice and men / Often go awry”.
Of mice and men is a very sad story of two itinerant farm workers, the friends George and Lennie, who wander around searching jobs in the 1930:s California. George is smart and cautious but Lennie is mentally retarded; in return he is big and strong. George cares about Lennie as a mentor and guardian. Such an alliance keeps them in work. Together they come to a farm in Soledad to work. Both of them have a dream to buy a small ranch of their own and keep cattle. Lennie’s part of the dream is to have rabbits and a dog. He likes small and soft things and often catches and plays with mice. The problem is that he kills them casually because he doesn't know his own strength. One day, when all the farm workers on the ranch play outside, Lennie plays alone with a puppy in a barn and kills it unwittingly. At this point, a young wife to the boss’s aggressive son Curley comes into the barn. She begins a conversation. You understand that she is lonely and unhappy. When talking, Lennie inadvertently kills the girl too. When Lennie understands what he has done he just runs away. The farm workers start chasing him to lynch the killer. George is ahead of them, and finding his companion, he accomplishes something supposed to rescue Lennie from the martyr…
I suppose that Steinbeck meant Lennie as a symbol for common people who are not conscious of their strength and if their energy breaks blindly out it almost always brings destruction. Lennie had a real prototype: Steinbeck worked with such a guy on a farm.
Apart from the main characters George and Lennie there are some minor characters:
• Candy: an old one-armed handyman, who worries about his future.
• Curley: a son to the boss of the farm, a small and quarrelsome guy.
• Curley’s wife: a young pretty girl who flirts with men; she is a damned wretch.
• Slim: a strong well-respected worker.
• Crooks: a humpbacked black stableman who has no rights to come to the barrack for the whites; he is always alone, reading a lot of books.
• Whit and Carlson: farmworkers.
• The Boss: owner of the ranch, a father to Curley.
There is also Aunt Clara who doesn’t act herself but George and Lennie remember her and talk about her. Aunt Clara was a woman who brought Lennie up. Now she is dead but she talks to Lennie in his head. You can see she was a nice woman and loved her foster child.
The main theme in the book is dreams. Many of the characters carry their own dreams throughout the story. George aspires to buy his own plot of land and to become an independent farmer. Lennie dreams about a safe and consistent place there he will help his friend to work the land and where he finally, will be able to have his own pets. Old Candy dreams to follow the two friends and to have a secure place for his chair days. Crooks would like to follow them too: he lacks for acceptance and safety. Curley’s wife dreams to become a famous actress or a cover girl. All the dreams remain might-have-been – this is the Great Depression time.
And all of them remain lonely. Loneliness is ultimately a common feature to all the characters of the book.
The author also emphasizes the society's prejudices against the mentally ill, physically handicapped and black people. This is not surprising since he wrote the book 75 years ago, when society has not yet being freed from the prejudices.
To say about the cultural differences in America and Sweden, the ways of living are somewhat different even today. For example, there are no travelling farm workers in Sweden. Just vaguely reminding them are berry pickers, coming to Sweden from other countries. Activities as playing horseshoes I have never heard about. So I was puzzled by reading about it: “From outside came the clang of horseshoes on the playing peg and the shouts of men, playing, encouraging, jeering,” so I looked for the information on the internet. How surprised I was that people still play this game!
Of mice and men is written chronologically in the past tense. The author uses a very colorful and expressive language in describing the nature and characters, and uses many synonyms in the text, for example: jarred, quivered, shivered. But there are a lot of dialog spellings in vulgar language that can be difficult to understand to people who just learn English as a foreign language. To be honest I got really irritated by reading dialogues such as: “Whatta you want?”, “Ain’t we gonna have no supper?”, “Awright, cover ‘im up if ya wanta. Whatta I care?”
Otherwise I liked this book. It gets quite exiting in the end, and after reading you stay in thought a while and speculate: “Why? Why has he done it? Could there be another end? Could the events evolve differently?”, and then you draw conclusions that there was no other way. Everything that happened was quite logical, and the characters acted according to the circumstances.
To sum up, I would like to say: on the one hand it is a very simple and clear book; on the other hand it has a deep meaning.