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I had read this back in high school when it was mandated. I vaguely remembered the story when I started reading it, many, many, many moons later and it is without a doubt a great classic tale.
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Of Mice and Men
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NEW LONGMAN LITERATURE titles provide an excellent selection of popular modern fiction and are suitable for 14-18 year olds of all abilities. Notes and questions are provided at the beginning of each section to help guide the student's understanding of key themes and language. A programme of study provides practice in skills required at GCSE.
“Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don’t belong no place ...With us it ain’t like that.We got a future ... because I got you to look after me and you got me to look after you.”
George and Lennie are migrant American labourers –the one alert and protective and the other strong, stupid and potentially dangerous. This is the powerful story of their relationship and their dreams of finding a more stable and less lonely way of life. This edition contains notes to help students' understanding.
--back cover
“Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don’t belong no place ...With us it ain’t like that.We got a future ... because I got you to look after me and you got me to look after you.”
George and Lennie are migrant American labourers –the one alert and protective and the other strong, stupid and potentially dangerous. This is the powerful story of their relationship and their dreams of finding a more stable and less lonely way of life. This edition contains notes to help students' understanding.
--back cover
160 pages, Hardcover
First published February 25,1937
This edition
- Format
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160 pages, Hardcover
- Published
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January 1, 2001 by Longman Publishing Group
- ISBN
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9780582461468
- ASIN
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0582461464
- Language
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English
Characters More characters
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George Milton
A quick-witted man who is Lennies guardian and best friend. His friendship with Lennie helps him to sustain his dream of a better future, but it ends with the death of his friend.more...
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Lennie Small
A gigantic, physically strong imbecile who travels with George and is his constant companion. He dreams of "living off the fatta the lan" and being able to tend to rabbits. His love for soft things is a weakness, mostly because he does not kno...
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Candy
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Curley
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Curleys Wife
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Slim
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About the author
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John Ernst Steinbeck was an American writer. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception". He has been called "a giant of American letters."
During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward F. Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas The Red Pony (1933) and Of Mice and Men (1937). The Pulitzer Prize–winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. By the 75th anniversary of its publishing date, it had sold 14 million copies.
Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists.
During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward F. Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas The Red Pony (1933) and Of Mice and Men (1937). The Pulitzer Prize–winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. By the 75th anniversary of its publishing date, it had sold 14 million copies.
Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists.
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Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 99 votes)
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the book that made me fall in love with steinbeck's prose.
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A small book with a big heart; actually it was George and Lennie with the big hearts. Two friends, migrant workers in California during the Depression, looking out for one another, trying to scrap by and save enough money for a place of their own. Their big dream can't overcome their human frailty or the harsh and unforgiving time they lived in. If not for the The Grapes of Wrath this would be Steinbeck's masterpiece.
4.5 stars
4.5 stars
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This is a book of characters who aspire to go places, but never quite get there. It is the only book that brought me to tears when I finished the last pages. You feel for both Lennie and George throughout, and while it's hard to read of the abuse towards the former, it allows you to see the depth and strength of the bond that both men have with each other. Companionship and loneliness are two recurring themes throughout this simple, yet impactful story.
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I remember reading this at school at being completely uninterested in the story. I remember the teacher droning on about basic plot allegories before we read each section; she would tell us what certain things “meant” before we had even seen them. She would explain how this portrays a vital part of American culture and a vital element of human nature. All in all we were told what to see in the book before we even began reading.
Perhaps she should have just let us read it first, and see what we took from it before being told how to read it. I hated it at the time. I hated being told that passages meant certain things when clearly criticism is just speculation. This wasn’t effective teaching: it was being told how to think. She should have prized open our minds and made us engage with it more. When I approached it again years later I did so with more of an open mind, I was determined to find more in the book than I’d been taught to see.
And I did. Lenny and George naively dream of the farm; they dream of a retreat where they can reside in friendship without having to answer to any master. They wouldn’t have to go to work; they can simply work for themselves. Running their own farm would mean that they are self-sustainable. They could grow crops for themselves and choose when they laboured: they would be free. Well George wants this. Lenny just wants a few rabbits to pet. The attractiveness of the dream draws in Candy, who is very old and very lonely. He doesn’t want to end up like his dog: put down because of his years. He wants someone to protect him and care for him in his advanced years. The three become united by this shared dream but it is nothing but fancy.
“Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head. They’re all the time talkin’ about it, but it’s jus’ in their head.”
Indeed, the American dream doesn’t exist in this book. Only harsh cold reality awaits the protagonists. Crooks, for all his cruel and understandable bitterness, was right in the end. The farm is just a dream. It is evocative of the loneliness within the human soul, and how we will always long for the impossible. It’s impossible because there is no sunset over the rainbow. Life doesn’t quite work like that. People don’t always get what they want. The world is a cruel unforgiving place here. This is embodied by Lenny; he is vulnerable and emotionally weak. He is completely unaware of the vicious strength he possesses. He never truly understands the situation. He almost walks through the world blind. The world he sees is different to that of everyone else’s.
So this is a story about the outsiders, about the unloved and misunderstood. This a story about those that long for an alternative to the drudgery of standard human existence, but have their expectations cut short. This is a story about how we judge people based upon their appearance and how we label them unjustly. This is a story that Mary Shelley would have loved, a story where a character with an innocent heart is destroyed by the world he should have been accepted by.
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Perhaps she should have just let us read it first, and see what we took from it before being told how to read it. I hated it at the time. I hated being told that passages meant certain things when clearly criticism is just speculation. This wasn’t effective teaching: it was being told how to think. She should have prized open our minds and made us engage with it more. When I approached it again years later I did so with more of an open mind, I was determined to find more in the book than I’d been taught to see.
And I did. Lenny and George naively dream of the farm; they dream of a retreat where they can reside in friendship without having to answer to any master. They wouldn’t have to go to work; they can simply work for themselves. Running their own farm would mean that they are self-sustainable. They could grow crops for themselves and choose when they laboured: they would be free. Well George wants this. Lenny just wants a few rabbits to pet. The attractiveness of the dream draws in Candy, who is very old and very lonely. He doesn’t want to end up like his dog: put down because of his years. He wants someone to protect him and care for him in his advanced years. The three become united by this shared dream but it is nothing but fancy.
“Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head. They’re all the time talkin’ about it, but it’s jus’ in their head.”
Indeed, the American dream doesn’t exist in this book. Only harsh cold reality awaits the protagonists. Crooks, for all his cruel and understandable bitterness, was right in the end. The farm is just a dream. It is evocative of the loneliness within the human soul, and how we will always long for the impossible. It’s impossible because there is no sunset over the rainbow. Life doesn’t quite work like that. People don’t always get what they want. The world is a cruel unforgiving place here. This is embodied by Lenny; he is vulnerable and emotionally weak. He is completely unaware of the vicious strength he possesses. He never truly understands the situation. He almost walks through the world blind. The world he sees is different to that of everyone else’s.
So this is a story about the outsiders, about the unloved and misunderstood. This a story about those that long for an alternative to the drudgery of standard human existence, but have their expectations cut short. This is a story about how we judge people based upon their appearance and how we label them unjustly. This is a story that Mary Shelley would have loved, a story where a character with an innocent heart is destroyed by the world he should have been accepted by.
__________________________________
You can connect with me on social media via My Linktree.
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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
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
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."
n
"But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,n
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."
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."
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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.
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.
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I think it's tradition for me to finish a classic and think, "That was good, but I wonder what insights and symbolism I missed out on since I didn't read this for class and have a professor telling me about it." It's also just really hard to review classics in general, because whereas "normal" books I can pick apart the plot, characters, pace, etc., there's something different about these. I feel like I always expect classics to be deep and mindblowing with huge world-shifting themes, but in reality, it's totally normal to be disappointed by them. In this case, I spent most of this book wondering what the point was. I wondered if I was just not connecting to this because it was too short, or because of the very slang dialogue, but by the end of this everything just clicked into place and I actually went into my mom's room to discuss. Touching, tragic, and just..... wow.
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