There are so many ways to start the telling of my perception of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. I could document the initial urge to just get the book over with, the gradual realization of an unexpected significance, the reluctance to reach the foreseen devastating ending, the tears shed after reaching the final blank page, and too much more to begin to speak of. None of them steer in the direction of vague appraisal and random accusations. As boundless strength seep through John Steinbeck’s heartfelt words, this review has no reason to be in lack of soul.

The center of attention is the idealized relationship between George and Lennie, a bond stronger than typical friendship but difficult to define in its inability to be understood. Cloaked in a tragic shroud, it was initiated by a promise and a childhood lesson, both of which inspired George to realize Lennie’s need for protection, and for Lennie’s growing dependence on George. Due to his mental disability, Lennie’s persona has, from the very beginning, been associated with a persistent innocence and tendency of self-harm due to the contrast between his physical strength and mental feebleness. John Steinbeck further enriched Lennie’s character by introducing what seems to be a metaphorical addition to his conflicting strength and weakness—mice, rabbits, and pups. Mice, specifically the one mouse caressed to death in the beginning, initialized Lennie’s unchanging fondness for petting fragile creatures; rabbits were portrayed in the ultimate dream of self-sustained life on self-bought land; pups were his devotion on the ranch, one of which he petted to death, a symbol of his own weakness and underlying threats. Rabbits, constantly mentioned by Lennie, served as a significant carrier of self-alert and motivation—both of which, ironically, didn’t achieve their purpose of helping Lennie realize his “promised” goal of tending them on his own land. This contradiction adds to the distressing beauty of Lennie’s destiny.

In attempts to unveil George’s motives in dragging along with him a friend that is merely commercially useful and in almost every other way, a burden (at least on the superficial surface), many have brought into the picture a simple reason for George’s insistence that Lennie’s a “good fellow”—loneliness, an inescapable emotion (especially in this novella). A noteworthy amount of Of Mice and Men characters have either indicated or outright confessed to feeing loneliness, significantly those that exist in the margins of society: black stable-hand Crooks (especially disempowered as the novella is set in California of the 1930s), misinterpreted daughter-in-law of the ranch-owner “Curley’s wife” (note that though she played a pivotal role, a name was never assigned to her), old handyman Candy… These bits and pieces glorify the special male friendship between George and Lennie, as assured by George in the first section of the novella:

“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. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us. We don’t have to sit in no bar room blowin’ in our jack jus’ because we got no place else to go. If them other guys gets in jail they can rot for all anybody gives a damn. But not us.”

Loneliness and isolation are perpetual themes of the human saga. In this interpretation of John Steinbeck, it’s connected with the weakness of humans and their tendency to feed upon those even weaker—a phenomenon that occurred between Crooks, Candy, Curley’s wife, and Lennie. An eternal loop of weakness linked the four together and pushed the story to its climax.

My personal moment of truth in this book came when Candy, after surrendering to the pleas of his co-workers to kill his ancient dog, voiced his regret of not taking its life himself:

“’I oughtta of shot that dog myself, George. I shouldn’t oughtta of let no stranger shoot my dog.’"

This is, not at all surprisingly, a reflection of the relationship between George and Lennie. Candy’s dog had been with him since he was a pup, George and Lennie were childhood playmates; Candy felt the urge to protect his dog and keep him near, George traveled with Lennie and bought into his dream of owning land together; Candy regretted not taking his dog’s life by himself, George denied his own chance to regret with his ultimate actions in the end… My comparison doesn’t suggest that Lennie, being mentally handicapped, is equivalent to a dog; however it does attempt to build a connection between the two similar relationships. Additionally, Candy’s dog exists to remind the reader of an everlasting threat of being denied due to uselessness, accomplishing its purpose in the death of Candy’s dog and the chain of weakness between the four minority characters in the novella.

No review of this novella has ever managed to escape the elaborate discussion of Lennie, a character torn between his physical strength and mental feebleness. He has an almost poetic innocence, trapped within everyone but expressed only through him. The reason I suggest the existence of this innocence in others is the fact that Lennie’s dream of living on an acre of self-bought land was contagious—it made Candy, Crooks, and even George believe in its feasibility. A memorable part of the book was when the men repeated their envisioned descriptions of idyllic life, both dreamy yet contradictory at the same time—if it really were that easy (a few months of labor on the ranch), why would anyone still be working for ranch-owners? The failed movie-star dream of Curley’s wife is also a reflection of the unattainable “American Dream” at the historical period of the Great Depression.

I don’t know if Lennie’s liability to trust George with all his heart is merely a result of his mental disability or a combination of that and their idealized relationship, but it is certain that in this trust lays a childlike simplicity. Therefore I could only compare Lennie to a child, which makes the ending all the more tear jerking and dramatic.

Heated debates about whether or not George’s decision in the end was correct have also caught my attention. In a heartbeat: yes. Although it might seem immoral and an act of betrayal, it was not only the right thing to do, but also the only thing that could have been done. This isn’t a matter or friendship or trust, but that of a greater spiritual connection. In the beginning of the book, George told Lennie to wait in the bushes near the pond if he ever got into trouble; in the very end, after Lennie realized the seriousness of his doing, he stole a weapon for defense and hid himself in the bushes, where he patiently waited for George to come get him out of trouble. In a sense, George lived up to this promise—Lennie’s last moments on earth were of only a desire to reach his dreamed-of land, not torments from men incapable of understanding this fragile yet strong relationship between George and Lennie. So when the bullet embarked on its short path, Lennie’s innocence and happiness were immortalized—a gift no better presented than by his defender and confidant, George.

To conclude, Of Mice and Men is timeless in its exploration of human themes and fierce interpretations of basic human traits.