The Book and the Lyrics

John Steinbeck’s novel, Of Mice and Men is a novel that can be closely related to a song by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. This song is called “Waiting” and is extremely powerful. While analyzing the two pieces of writing, there are many ideas and themes that can be linked together. Both song and novel have many different outlooks on life and relationships one person can encounter. Within the song, there are lines that can be directed as the same as Of Mice and Men. The two are superlatively alike in the aspect of relation; they both show sorrow, change and the mind of a man in confusion.

The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus’s song “Waiting” starts with sorrow and the feelings that is accompany with it. The sorrow of life’s past occurrences is one idea that is played through out. “Feeling sorrow . . . Bring back the days we had before tomorrow/relapse and then collapse into yourself once more.” (Winter) These lines of this song are saying that when feeling sorrow, it brings back all the good times. Once those times are remembered, the pains that come from sorrow return. This feeling, this pain is showed in the novel by John Steinbeck. When Lennie kills the mice and then gets hollered at by George, he feels sorrow for the loss of the mouse he just killed by mistake. He begins to think about the mouse before he killed it and how soft it was. After a while, he ends up killing again and it all begins.

Lennie looked sadly up at him. [George] “ They [the mouse] was so little,” he said apologetically. “I’d pet �em and pretty soon they bit my fingers and I pinch their heads a little and then they was dead -- because they was so small.” (Steinbeck 9)

When he then kills again, its like the last line mentioned in the lyrics of “Waiting”. He returns to himself and the killings of the all the mice he finds. Both the song and the novella show sorrow in different intensities and the affect of the feeling.

Change. Everyone wants a type of change somewhere in their life. The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus has four lines in this song that describes change and it’s power on a person.

Waiting for this life to change seems like it's taking me forever/and I can't hold on. This light is breaking into the day/This life is going to changeseems like it's taking me forever/And I can't hold on. This light is breaking into the day (Winter)

This shows how change can take a long time, causing a person to fall apart. He or she knows it will at some time change but he just don’t know when or how the change will occur. These lines in the song send the message that change will happen and you will never understand when, how, or why it happens. Of Mice and Men shows how people want change so badly and never know when or how it will happen. Lennie and George have a common dream that they will soon have “change” in their lives that will give them their own farm and life. Lennie starts to talk about their dream with George and how their lives will change. They will change from workers to people that are owners of their own farm “�George, how long’s it gonna be till we get that little place an’ live on the fatta the lan’ --an’ rabbits?’” (Steinbeck 56) This part of the novella can be said to be the start of the change that might happen in their lives. Each part of the novella and the lyrics show how there is some type of change that needed to happen. Each also show how each can take a long time to occur. When the change doesn’t have quickly, there is a feeling of it is taking