Of Mice and Men Review

Of Mice and Men Review

"Everyone in the world has a dream he knows can't come off but he spends his life hoping it may. This is at once the sadness, the greatness, and the triumph of our species," novelist John Steinbeck wrote in a letter about the major theme of his 1937 novel Of Mice and Men. This story about itinerant ranch hands is set in California during the Depression.

George is a hard-working laborer who has taken responsibility for looking after Lennie, a mentally retarded man. As they move to a new place, they try to forget the trouble caused when Lennie innocently touched a girl's dress.

The back-breaking existence of these two buddies is sustained by their dream of owning their own plot of land. When Candy, a veteran ranch hand, hears about their scheme, he wants to buy into the plan. Two other dreamers are less fortunate — the lonely wife of the ranch owner's son can't find anyone to pay any attention to her, and Crooks, a black laborer, laments the fact that he is excluded from the community on account of his color.

"And will there be rabbits, George?" "Yeah, Lennie, There'll be rabbits." There is a certain curse attached to the most familiar lines in literature. Because we know them so well, we tend to smile when we encounter them, and they can break the reality of the story they're trying to tell. What stage Hamlet has not despaired of getting through "To be, or not to be?" in one piece? In John Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men, the lines about the rabbits have became emblems for the whole relationship between George and Lennie - the quiet-spoken farm laborer and the sweet, retarded friend he has taken under his arm. I would not have thought I could believe the line about the rabbits one more time, but this book made me do it, as Lennie asks about the farm they'll own one day, and George says, yes, it will be just as they've imagined it.

Two of them are George and Lennie, who together might make a perfect person, Lennie with his great strength and simplicity, George with his intelligence and cunning. George does the thinking for them,