Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Friendship, dream, agony.This book is not an easy read by any means. But while the book graced with beautiful friendships and human kindness, it also explores the darkest aspects of humanity and ugly racism. That's a story of the love of one man for his friend, he is willing to give up so much to help his friend because he loves him like a brother. That's a masterfully written book with a very tragic ending and I couldn't stop my tears.

n  I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why.n

Classic.

i hated this book.
steinbeck is crap.
children should not be forced to read it.

ok, i really just don't like steinbeck's aesthetic. i dislike the killing of innocent animals, the dehumanization of the mentally retarded--and don't try to tell me that lenny isn't marginalized here. the book is depressing and directionless, and not in the ironic waiting-for-godot sort of way. the descriptions are flat, emotionless, and dessicated.

however, curly's wife is awesome. she's just so bizarre and pathetic, so out of place. i love her.

What more can I possibly add to a discussion of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men without drawing a high school English teacher's salary? Considering I'm not drawing bored glances from teenagers, I doubt that a check from LAUSD will appear in my mailbox anytime soon.

-- Published in 1937, this is the work that the Goodreads algorithms seem to have agreed is the author's most renowned. For Stephen King, it's The Shining, for Elmore Leonard it's Get Shorty and for John Steinbeck it's Of Mice and Men.

-- This is a novella, approximate length 34,720 words. I read it in under forty-eight hours.

-- The story revolves around two ranch hands traveling the highways and ranches of California, looking out for each other and trying to build enough of a stake to put down on their own piece of land.

Both were dressed in denim trousers and in denim coats with brass buttons. Both wore black, shapeless hats and both carried tight blanket rolls slung over their shoulders. The first man was 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. Behind him walked his opposite, 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. His arms did not swing at his sides, but hung loosely.



-- George Milton is the small man, the thinker. Lennie Small is the child in a hulk's body. Walking ten miles to a barley ranch south of Soledad after a bus driver with a grudge drops them off on the highway far short of their destination, Lennie is fascinated by petting mice or rabbits or anything with a nice texture. Lennie has never laid a hand on George, enamored by the tales his traveling partner tells of the land they'll settle someday. When the men finally arrive for work, George does the talking.

"He ain't no cuckoo," said George. "He's dumb as hell, but he ain't crazy. An' I ain't so bright neither, or I wouldn't be buckin' barley for my fifty and found. If I was bright, if I was even a little bit smart, I'd have my own little place, an' I'd be bringin' in my own crops, 'stead of doin' all the work and not getting what comes up outta the ground." George fell silent. He wanted to talk. Slim neither encouraged nor discouraged him. He just sat back quiet and receptive.

-- One of the reasons John Steinbeck is my favorite author is that when he pens description, I don't want it to end, and when he switches to dialogue, I don't want his characters to stop talking either. Stephen King's dialogue can be tin, while Elmore Leonard's attentiveness when it comes to prose is short spanned to say the least, but Steinbeck's descriptions and dialogue achieve a purity that captivates me. It's like the difference between drinking water from a garden hose that's been drying in the sun with who knows what crawling inside it and one day, someone hands you a bottle of Perrier.



-- While most authors have been around people, with Steinbeck, I'm always left with the undeniable impression he watched and achieved a wisdom about people. Then he works that knowledge into his books and passes it along to the reader. I find myself able to relate to Steinbeck more than I can the majority of contemporary authors, who often seem to have never been around humans who dreamed, drank, lusted, got into fights or trouble with the law, fell out with family members or worried about where their next meal might come from.

Crooks said gently, "Maybe you can see now. You got George. You know he's goin' to come back. S'pose you didn't have nobody. S'pose you couldn't go into the bunkhouse and play rummy 'cause you was black. How'd you like that? S'pose you had to sit out here an' read books. Sure you could play horseshoes till it got dark, but then you got to read books. Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody--to be near him." He whined, "A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long as he's with you. I tell ya," he cried, "I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick."

-- For those joining late, I'm no English teacher, but if I encountered someone who was adamant that they didn't read fiction (I'm thinking men here) and I wanted to try to get them to change their attitude, Of Mice and Men would be the novel I'd hand them. It's short, it's about men and work and figuring out a better future and loyalty and how things don't always work out the way you dream they will. Yet the writing takes me away to another place. I couldn't last a day bucking barley or bucking a sack of anything, but as Steinbeck knows well, we all yearn to be on the open road, traveling, camping out on a river and maybe eating beans just because we felt like it.

-- Lastly, Of Mice and Men has been adapted to film twice: a 1939 production starring Burgess Meredith as George and Lon Chaney Jr. as Lennie and a 1992 film with Gary Sinise as George and John Malkovich as Lennie. Reading the novel, I heard Sinise's voice as George. As Lennie, I heard the Abominable Snowman from the 1949 Looney Toons short directed by Chuck Jones, The Abominable Snow Rabbit. References to Steinbeck's novel have been dropped by a ton of cartoon series, perhaps as much a tribute to Jones as to Steinbeck, but the homage that stands out for me are the characters of Pinky and the Brain on Animaniacs.

Of Mice And Men is a novella written by John Steinbeck in 1937. It follows the experiences of George, and Lennie Small. They are two migrant workers durring the great depression and have many hair raising experiences. Lennie Small does not hav all his wits about him, so George looks after him and they have a great relationship. I will not spoil the end of the novella for you but to say that it is very sad and tragic. I highly recommend this book to all.

This is a story about George Milton and Lennie Small, two migrant ranch workers, who move from place to place in California in search of new job opportunities during the Great Depression in the United States. George Milton is intelligent but uneducated and Lennie Small is extremely physically strong but mentally disabled.

After being hired at a farm, the pair are confronted by the Boss's son who dislikes Lennie. Another worker on the farm offers to help pay to buy a farm with George and Lennie. However, the next day Lennie accidentally kills his puppy while stroking it. After finding out about Lennie's habit, the farmer's wife offers to let him stroke her hair. When she starts to panic and scream Lennie becomes nervous and breaks her neck… This leads to a very tragic ending...

Of course, when reading a classic novel I have to research the author and find out "more."
This book was based on Steinbeck's own experiences as a bindlestiff in the 1920s. He got the title from Robert Burns' poem "To a Mouse," which read: "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men." (The best laid schemes of mice and men)

I suggest this book to anyone that enjoys short classics that don't have happy endings.

Over the past year, I have rediscovered John Steinbeck as a master American story teller. Having read Cannery Row and its follow up Sweet Thursday, I realized what a prolific author Steinbeck was and hope to continue my reading with a number of his novels this year. One novella I did read while in school but have a fuzzy memory of is Of Mice and Men. With a square on this year's classic bingo board being read a group read that you haven't read yet, I decided that it was as good a time as any to revisit this work of Steinbeck's through adult eyes.

Near the Salinas River and Soledad, California, two nomadic farm hands named George and Lennie stake out their existence in life. George dreams of having his own farm house and acreage but it is during the depression and he has little money saved. He also promised Aunt Clara, really a family friend, that he would take care of her nephew Lennie, a dimwitted yet strong man. Steinbeck portrays George as an average man during his era who attempts to find work in order to make ends meet, yet he has the added burden of caring for and providing for Lennie's well being. Had this been written in contemporary times, Lennie would have been characterized as developmentally disabled or autistic, yet in the 1930s society could not pinpoint what ailed people like Lennie. They were dismissed as dimwitted with little future, preventing those caring for them in having many prospects for bettering themselves either.

The reader finds out that Lennie loves animals although with his limited mental capacity he does not have success in caring for them, killing one mouse, rabbit, or puppy after another. Steinbeck alludes to the fact that the reason that George and Lennie are in between jobs is because Lennie had felt a woman's dress meaning no harm, yet the act alarmed other members of their work team, forcing the duo to flee the premises. As the pair approaches yet another farm, George makes Lennie promise to keep his mouth shut, to do whatever George asks him to, and to please stay out of trouble. Despite the best of intentions, with Lennie's condition being what it is, he does not always remember to do what George asks of him, putting both of their futures in jeopardy.

As in past jobs, George quickly becomes friendly with the rest of the work crew, attempting to distance himself from Lennie. Lennie ends up attempting a friendship with the rest of the outcasts on the farm, including a Negro horseshoe hand, yet even this relationship ends in tragedy. When Lennie's actions result in tragic proportions, George must choose between protecting Lennie and thinking of himself and his own future, with the denouement coming to a upsetting climax. I could not help but thinking that if George and Lennie lived today with society's awareness of degrees of developmental delays, that both George and Lennie would have enjoyed a happier existence. The burden of caring for Lennie would not have been placed on George, and Lennie himself would have been taught the rudimentary aspects of self care and perhaps even been placed in a basic job. Yet, placing George and Lennie in modern times is hearsay and their relationship ended in tragedy with Steinbeck placing George in a precarious situation which he would have to dwell upon for the rest of his life.

In reading Steinbeck I have seen how he has done a masterful job in painting his characters as archetypes of the era in which they lived, usually depression era California. George and Lennie are two men looking to better themselves in a decade when one had little to be happy about. While rereading this tragic novella, I could not help but think if like other books I read for school if this is above most teenagers heads. Perhaps, teachers could discuss George and Lennie's relationship and where Lennie would be if he lived today, much as I did while reading. Yet, like other books I read at the time, Of Mice and Men gains a deeper appreciation while reading it through adult eyes. Another bingo square checked off, yet definitely not the last Steinbeck novel I will devour this year.

4.5 stars

I think I've been avoiding John Steinbeck, consciously or subconsciously, ever since I was a horse-loving teenager and thought that The Red Pony would be a nice, pleasant book to read.

  

I didn't read any Steinbeck books for years.

But I was in the local library, puttering around in the general fiction shelves, and happened to pull this one out and noticed how short it was--only 107 pages. I had just finished reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which was a 127-page overdose of cheesy 70's inspiration, and it occurred to me that by reading this book to offset JLS I could restore the cosmic balance in my life, or something like that.

Lennie and George are a unique pair of friends: George is restless, intelligent and often short-tempered; Lennie is huge and incredibly strong, although mentally damaged. He has a childlike sweetness but is easily confused and frightened, and that combined with his strength makes him threatening to others. Somehow, despite their differences, the two have formed a friendship. George tries to protect Lennie from the world . . . and the world from Lennie. It's a difficult task. But they have their dreams and plans of a place of their own, where they can tend a garden and raise animals. And Lennie can take care of the rabbits. It's the most heavenly thing he can imagine.

George and Lennie are hired as field hands at a ranch in California, and the foreshadowings of disaster start to come thick and fast. An old sheepdog whose usefulness has passed is unceremoniously shot. The owner's son Curley comes around to their bunkhouse, spoiling for a fight. Curley's young, bored wife comes around even more often, looking for a different kind of trouble. The hands are sure that they only need a month or two of wages to achieve their plans of a place of their own, but the best-laid schemes of mice and men gang oft agley.

I was expecting to read about shattered dreams, but I was surprised and touched by the strength of the theme of true friendship--not just the friendship between George and Lennie, but also the friendship and understanding offered by Slim, the ranch foreman. With all of the loneliness and cruelty and loss and disappointment that life can bring, it's this one message of hope that I choose to take away from this short but powerful book.

|| 4.0 stars ||

I AM IN TEARS!!

They all deserved so much better…! They all lived with so much sadness, so much hopelessness, so much loneliness, so much unfairness…

But oh, especially Lennie…My heart really broke for the big guy. He didn’t understand a thing that was going on, and he really just wanted to play with the mice, and the rabbits, and the puppies… That’s the only thing he ever wanted. He didn’t need anything else.
He had the purest of hearts, but he simply didn’t know his own strength and for some reason people couldn’t just leave him be… He was genuinely just scared and confused when he did what he did, and he really didn’t deserve what happened afterwards…
But I also understand why George had to do what he had to do. Nobody could have really helped Lennie back then and he would have been too much of a danger to others…
It’s so tragic, though. God. I’m still upset by it.


n  John Steinbeck books:n
Of Mice and Men - 4.0 stars
The Pearl - 2.0 stars

كان حلما، أملا، رغبة وطموحا .
كان خطة، نفقا مضيئا في ظلمات الحياة، ركيزة تشحذ بها وعليها الهمم، غاية للاستيقاظ كل صباح وهدفا في حياة سوداء قاتمة

العمل.. ثمّ العمل.. لامتلاك مزرعة
ولكن .. نحن معشر الطبقة الكادحة الكالحة.. نعمل.. ونعمل.. ونعمل.. ثمّ نموت.. عيشة رمادية ضبابية.. ثمّ موت أسود قاتم .

إنّ الأشخاص الذين هم على شاكلتنا، ويخدمون في المزارع، ليس لهم في هذا العالم ظهر ولا أهل.. إنّهم وحيدون ..


رواية من زمن الكساد والفتور الإقتصادي في الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية، رواية عن الرجال والفئران .. والعنوان هنا رمزي مقتبس .. لأنّ أغلب خطط الرجال والفئران دائما ما تنحرف و لا تنال المرجو منها.. كحال أبطالنا الذين أهلكوا جسدهم بالعمل رجاء وأملا في كسب المال الوفير لتحقيق الحلم.. فلا حلما حققوا و لا مالا كسبوا .



" وماذا سيحدث ؟
في أحد الأيام سنجمع دراهمنا التي ادخرناها، وسنبتاع فدان أو فدانين من الأرض، وسنقتني بقرة وعددا من الخنازير-
- آه.. سنعيش كالأثرياء.. وستكون في حوزتنا الأرانب.. قل.. تكلّم.. تكلّم يا جورج عن الأرانب وأقفاصها.. قل لي كيف تهطل الأمطار في الشتاء..تحدث عن موقدنا ..
-نعم.. ستكون لنا حديقة.. حديقة تزرع ببذور البطيخ.. وسيكون لنا قن بين الأرانب و الدجاج.. وحين يبدأ هطول الأمطار في الشتاء سنتوقف عن العمل..وإذ ذاك سيكون لنا وقت للراحة والإستجمام.. وسنصغي إلى صوت الرذاذ، وسنكون في أقصى درجات السعادة والغبطة.."



و ماذا سيحدث ؟
ستجد نفسك فجأة وقد كبرت.. وترهل جسدك.. وضعف بصرك.. وانحنت قامتك. ستجد نفسك فجأة قد خارت عزيمتك.. وتدهورتصحتك.. فلم تعد ذلك الشاب القوي مفتول الساعد. ستجد نفسك بدون مأوى.. لأنّك لم تعد تصلح لشيء.. فأنت أصبحت ككلب عجوز.. لا يستطيع الحراسة ولا الرعي ولا النباح حتى.. فما كان من صاحبه إلا أن أطلق عليه في الرأس. أما أنت فلن تجد من يفعل لك ذلك.. ستجد نفسك فجأة وأنت تنظر إلى السنين التي مضت، سنين كنت تشتغل فيها لتأكل.. وتأكل لتعيش.. وتعيش لتشتغل وتعمل.. دائرة وسلسلة لا نهائية.. أو نهائية لأنها تتغذى على السنين.. وتتغذى على الصحة .

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هل نحن رجال أم فئران ؟؟؟؟

The most moving work of fiction I've ever read.

"In every bit of honest writing in the world ... there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love." - Steinbeck, 1938

5 stars. A book that brings me to tears. This world could use a few more Lennies, and a lot more Georges.

Of Mice and Men was published in 1937, John Steinbeck's second of three books that would focus on the working and laboring agricultural itinerant class of California during the Great Depression, the third being The Grapes of Wrath published in 1939. Of Mice and Men is the story of loyalty and friendship between two men rooted in kindness and hope and their dreams. In the Introduction by Susan Shillinglaw to the copy I read, it is asserted that "Steinbeck's greatness as a writer lies in his empathy for common people--their loneliness, joy, anger, and strength, their connection to places and their craving for land." John Steinbeck's title of the book was taken from a poem by Robert Burns suggesting the transitory quality of even the best laid schemes as it tells of an unfortunate field mouse whose home is flattened by a plow:

n  

"But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain
For promised joy."

n
Of Mice and Men is the story of the friendship between Lennie and George. As they are making their way to the next agricultural job they are described in the opening chapter in this way:

n  

"Both were dressed in denim trousers and in denim coats with brass buttons. Both wore black, shapeless hats and both carried tight blanket rolls slung over their shoulders. The first man was 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. Behind him walked his opposite, 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. His arms did not swing at his sides, but hung loosely."

n

As the novella unfolds, we learn of the depth of the friendship between George and Lennie and their shared dream of having their own place, earning a stake to contribute toward realizing their dream of their own little house and a couple of acres and a cow and some pigs "an' live off the fatta the lan'." As we come to know more about George and Lennie, there is a heavy and ominous feel to this heartbreaking book making it clear why John Steinbeck is such a beloved author.

ADDENDUM: A few nights ago we watched the film adaptation Of Mice and Men when I realized that the dialogue was identical to that of the book. Then I remembered that John Steinbeck had written this novel in such a way that it could be adapted to the stage as written. In the Introduction it talks of a letter to his agents in April 1936, where Steinbeck said Of Mice and Men, "is neither a novel nor a play but it is kind of a playable novel. Written in novel form but so scened and set that it can be played as it stands."

موش ها و آدم ها، خوشه های خشم، شرق بهشت

مغزم از کتاب های ادبیات سال های دبیرستان تربیت شده که به نام اشتاین بک این سه پاسخ رو بده، طوطی وار و بی علاقه
ولی از این به بعد نه
از این به بعد یادم می مونه که تو تاریکی اون شب تب دار یک نفس صحبت های جورج و لنی که کنار آب نشسته بودند رو می خوندم
یادم می مونه که فکر کردم بعضی وقت ها دیوانه وار فقط به یک چیز فکر می کنم، مثل لنی و خرگوش هاش
یادم می مونه که فکر کردم من مثل جورج خیلی جاها می تونستم و می تونم لنی های زندگیم رو رها کنم، ولی خودم نخواستم
که مثل لنی همیشه میگم که می تونم توی غار زندگی کنم و اصلا هم کچاپ نخورم ولی خودم می دونم نمی تونم
که مثل جورج آرزوی زمینم رو انقدر برای خودم بزرگ کردم که می دونم بهش نمی رسم
که من چقدر وقت ها بوده که مثل لنی نخواستم آزاری برسونم ولی به موقع رها نکردم، چون وحشت کرده بودم
که مثل جورج، هرچقدر هم تلاش کنم نمی تونم لنی رو از خودش نجات بدم
n  
هرگز یادم نمیره که من خودم هم لنی هستم و هم جورج
و خودمم که کار خودم رو می سازم
n
پینوشت: واضحه که همیشه خواندن کتاب به زبان اصلیش بهتر از ترجمه ست. ولی در مورد این کتاب فکر می کنم هیچ ترجمه ای "نمی تونه" حق مطلب رو ادا کنه

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