UNIVERZITA HRADEC KRÁLOVÉ

Pedagogická fakulta
Katedra anglického jazyka a literatury

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Essay

Autorka: Monika Kvapilová

Studijní obor: Učitelství pro 2. stupeň základní školy – anglický jazyk a biologie

Předmět: Literatura USA v angličtině 2

Vyučující: prof. PhDr. Bohuslav Mánek, CSc.

Hradec Králové 25. 01. 2022

 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Of Mice and Men is a novella written by John Steinbeck. The book was published in
1937. The story takes place in near Soledad, California, amid America's Great Depression
during the 1930s. Steinbeck based this novella on his own experience working alongside
migrant farm workers as a teenager in the 1910s. 1

John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. was born in 1902 and died in 1968. He was an American
author. He won Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962 for “his realistic and imaginative writings,
combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception.” 1 He has been called “a
giant of American letters."1

Steinbeck wrote thirty-three books including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books,
and two collections of short stories. The most widely known are Tortilla Flat (1935),
Cannery Row (1945), East of Eden (1952), Red Pony (1933), and Of Mice and Men (1937).
He won the Pulitzer Prize for the novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) which is considered as
Steinbeck´s masterpiece which sold more that fourteen million copies worldwide. 1

Characters
Lennie Small – He is a huge and extremely strong man who is mentally handicapped.
He is gentle and innocent person and although he can get can get angry, he is not malicious.
He was raised by his aunt Clara until her death. After her death, George, a friend of the
family, and Lennie began to work together. Lennie values his relationship with George and
maintains a dream of having a rabbit farm.

George Milton – He is a small man with a sharp mind. He is good at planning and
has insight into social dynamics. At the start of their friendship, George played jokes at
Lennie but they soon became friends. George values friendship above all else and would
rather take care of Lennie than be lonely.

Curley´s wife – She is an attractive young woman and the wife of the boss´s son. The
fact that she is not named shows that she does not receive respect from the men. She is way
too flirtatious and constantly seeks affection due to her loneliness on ranch. This ultimately
leads to her death as she does not understand the danger Lennie presents.
 Curly – He is the son of the boss of the ranch. He considers himself to be a
successful lightweight boxer. He is insecure about his small size and that leads him to pick
fights with bigger guys. He is also constantly suspicious that men are with his wife.

Slim - He is skilled ranch hand and perhaps the most respected man on the ranch.
Slim and George form a friendship as they recognize Lennie´s limitations and good
intentions. At the end of the book Slim comforts George for shooting Lennie telling him that
it was something that had to happen.

Candy – He is an old man that has worked on the ranch for years. His right hand was
torn off during an accident. He has an old sheep dog to keep him company. Candy´s job is to
sweep out the bunkhouse. He knows that when he no longer can do this, he will be fired.
Because of this he fears loneliness and wants to join George and Lennie on their dream farm.
When George tells him that the dream is death, Candy is crushed.

Of Mice and Men

Lennie is a huge man who is mentally handicapped. Whereas George is small in
stature and has a keen mind. George repeatedly tells Lennie about his dream of buying a farm,
living off the land. Lennie never tires of hearing it. Especially the part about taking care of
some rabbits. George tells Lennie that if he is in any trouble, return to the pool that is on the
outskirts of the ranch and hide there. The next morning on the ranch, Candy brings Lennie
and George into the bunkhouse.

After an initial confrontation with Curly, George warns Lennie about Curly wanting
to fight with him and tells Lennie not to have anything to do with it. Curly´s flirtatious wife
then visits the bunkhouse looking for Curly. After she leaves, George declares her tramp and
tells Lennie not to pay any attention to her. George tells Slim how he and Lennie got together
and then confesses that Lennie got into trouble at their previous job when he wanted to feel a
dress that a girl was wearing. George again describes the dream farm to Lennie and Candy
offers to join. He wants to live on the farm with George and Lennie.

Curly returns and picks a fight with Lennie. When George yells for Lennie to fight
back, Lennie grabs Curly´s hand and crushes it. To prevent Lennie and George from getting
fired, Slim convinces Curly to say he got his hand caught in a machine. An African-American
worker, who lives in the barn, grudgingly asks Lennie to visit him and then scares him by
asking what would he do if George never came back from town.
 Curly´s wife suspects Lennie for breaking her husband´s hand and then flirts with
him resulting in her accidental death. Lennie knows he has done something terrible and runs
to the pool. Candy finds Curly´s dead wife and brings in George who immediately knows that
it was Lennie who killed her. When Curly realizes Lennie killed his wife, he becomes enraged
and goes off to organize a mob. When George finds Lennie, Lennie is scared that George will
scold him, but he does not. George says that he and Lennie are different from the other guy
because they have each other. George tells Lennie to turn around and look across the river.
Then George shoots Lennie in the head. Mercifully killing his friend before the mob does.

My opinion
When the book starts Lennie and George are on their way to a ranch, where are they
going to work, and they hope that they are going to stay out of trouble. The first thing that
immediately struck me is that Lennie has a dead mouse in his pocket of his jacket that he
keeps stroking. It is such a small innocent thing that is different from the normal behaviour,
but it makes you realize how Lennie thinks and sees the world.

I felt like the imagery of the book was very vivid and the characters were so live-like
that it made me emotional more that one time.

What I was not expecting was the tone of the book. Right from the beginning you
can tell that the story is going to end tragically. You can kind of see what is going to happen,
but you still keep hoping for it to go the opposite direction. This fills you up with hope and
sadness at the same time. All George and Lennie wanted was to have a little place where they
could live off the fat of the land and Lennie could tend the rabbits.

This book shows us that even he best laid plans are easy to get messed up. And
loliness is the bigest fear of many people.

Sources

STEINBECK, John. Of Mice and Men. [online]. [cit. 25. 01. 2022]. Dostupné z WWW:
https://giove.isti.cnr.it/demo/eread/Libri/sad/OfMiceAndMen.pdf

1
John Steinbeck [online], poslední aktualizace 23. 01 2022 12:02 [cit. 25. 01. 2022],
Wikipedie. Dostupné z WWW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck