Analyisis for: Of Mice and Men   

    John Steinbeck was born in February 1902 in Salinas, California, which is where many of his books take place. Steinbeck’s mother was a teacher, which is why he got so interested in books. He went to the local high school in Monterey Bay, and in his free time he worked on farms and ranches. Steinbeck went to Stanford University but he never graduated. In an attempt to kick-start his career, he moved to New York in 1925. After having no luck in the career at the time, he returned to California. Back in Salinas, Steinbeck was able to come up with a few short stories and novels, and he created what would become his first widely known book, Tortilla Flat written in 1935. The book was composed of a set of humorous stories about Monterey paisanos. The Red Pony has a paisano in it; an old man named Gitano. Today we consider The Grapes of Wrath as Steinbeck‘s best novel, written in 1939. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.
            A quote from Steinbeck’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech: “Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it and it has not changed except to become more needed.” Steinbeck is saying how there is no difference in how we used to speak and write, but that now we have become more adapt to it and we need to hear it constantly, and thus we create easier ways of communicating. Steinbeck talks to us personally in his books by creating characters that represent people around him, and using scenery that he is familiar with. Of Mice and Men and The Red Pony can be compared to each other show his style of writing and give us an idea of how he uses different strategies to convey thoughts and ideas to the reader.

            To begin, the story Of Mice and Men gives us a walkthrough of the life of two workers who have no one but each other and are complete opposites. There is a man who is “small and quick, dark of face, with restless eyes and sharp, strong features. Every part of him was defined: small, strong hands, slender arms, a thin and bony nose.” This was George, the leader of the two men; he was more intelligent than Lennie, which wasn’t saying much, and he could order Lennie to do something and he would do it just because George said so. The only reason George stopped ordering him around for fun was because he told Lennie to jump into a river one day, and he did, but he was so dumb he did not remember that “he couldn’t swim one stroke” and he nearly died. Lennie though was the complete opposite of George; “a huge man, shapeless of face, with large, pale eyes, with wide, sloping shoulders; and he walked heavily, dragging his feet a little, the way a bear drags his paws.” These two men head out on an adventure to “make a stake” and not have to travel the country scrounging for every little thing they needed.

            A quick summary of the book goes as follows: George and Lennie had to flee from a farm near Weed, because Lennie wanted to touch a lady’s dress and he wouldn’t let it go, and she said he raped her. They headed to a new ranch near Soledad, California and George did not want Lennie to screw up this job too. They hoped to find work and earn some money to finally settle down somewhere. After they are hired, the two men befriend an aging farmhand, Candy, with whom they plan to buy a farm. Despite all that he does, Lennie again gets into trouble when he kills the boss’s son’s wife. He had accidentally strangled her because he didn’t want to get in trouble. She yelled because he was messing her hair up when she only asked him to feel how soft it was. He tried to hide her dead body under some hay, and then he flees to the spot where George told him to go if he got into trouble. The men from the ranch go out to search for and kill Lennie, but George finds him first. To save Lennie from being tortured and lynched, he performs the only act of mercy he can, and he shoots him right in the back of the head.

            Irony engulfs the book and Steinbeck purposefully uses this to add drama to the plot. One example of irony is when Lennie and George are camping out for the night before they start off for a new job and they‘re cooking beans, and Lennie says, “I like ‘em with ketchup.” George exploded saying how he has nothing because of Lennie and without Lennie then he could be living off of the land and not having to run away from trouble all the time. The ironic thing is Lennie is only kidding and he says, “I was only foolin’ George. I don’t want no ketchup. I wouldn’t eat no ketchup if it was right here beside me. I’d leave it all for you. You could cover your beans with it and I wouldn’t touch none of it.” Another time in the story where irony occurs if when Candy’s old dog needs to be dealt with; the dog smells so bad, is blind, and can hardly walk and the people can’t stand it any more. So Candy regrets letting one of the other men, Carlson, take his dog out and shoot it in the back of the head, because he thinks he should’ve done it since it was his dog that he raised since it was a pup. At the end of the story when Lennie is running from Curley and the other guys, George makes the decision to save Lennie from a slow and painful lynching; he shoots Lennie in the back of the head. Just like the dog, Lennie has to be put out of his, what would be, misery. Ironically, the dog just followed Candy around and did not bother anyone and only did what he was told; Lennie followed George around and didn’t get in anyone’s way either, yet both were killed for just being there.

            The overlying theme of the book is dreaming. Everyone in the story has a dream. George, Lennie, Candy, and Crooks all have an idea of what they want in life. Their dream is to have the house where they take orders from no one and can do whatever they feel. Lennie only wants to tend the rabbits and feed them alfalfa. Lennie always asks George to repeat what life will be like on the farm, and even though he can remember every part, he still loves to hear it said from George so he knows it will come true. It is a way for him to be happy and escape loneliness, because all he had was his aunt back home that barely cared for him. But Lennie and the other men are not the only ones with dreams. Curley’s wife also dreams of being a star and living in luxury. Part of her problem though is that she is dissatisfied with her life with Curley, and she will never be able to amount to what she wants to be in her dreams. No one in the story achieves their dreams. Steinbeck applies each of the stories that his novels are telling to present day life in America. By doing this, he created classical novels that won the hearts of Americans everywhere.