Of Mice and Men

From Free net encyclopedia

Template:Infobox Book Of Mice and Men is a novel by John Steinbeck, first published in 1937, which tells the tragic story of George and Lennie, two displaced Anglo migrant farm workers in California during the Great Depression (1929-1939). The story is set on a farm a few miles from Soledad (Soledad is Spanish for Solitude) in the Salinas Valley.

Synopsis

An extended annotated version of the novella can be found at Wikibooks:Of Mice and Men.

The title of the story refers to a line in the Scots poem To a Mouse by the national poet of Scotland Robert Burns: "The best-laid schemes o mice an men, Gang aft agley" (Eng: "Often go awry").

Lennie is a large, strong man with the mind of a child, and George is a smaller man with quick wit who cares for Lennie. Lennie's love of touching soft things results in an accusation of rape by a woman whose dress he felt in the town of Weed. A mob from the town vows to lynch Lennie, which forces George and Lennie to leave their current town and find new work at a ranch near Soledad, California. George and Lennie hope to escape the repetitive, wandering fate of most ranch workers by saving up enough money to buy a small farm of their own. Lennie is driven to this goal by the prospect of "tending the rabbits". However, this goal is only a dream until Candy, another worker on the farm, offers to contribute his savings for a place on the farm. While subjected to the loneliness and mediocrity of the life they presently lead, George and Lennie's prospect of their own farm attracts yet another hopeful, Crooks, the "Negro" stable buck. Despite their best efforts, however, the dream begins to collapse, completely falling apart when Lennie accidentally kills the wife of Curley, a worker and son of the ranch boss. After killing Curley's wife, Lennie escapes to the river where the story had begun, the place where George told him to go should he ever got into trouble. To spare Lennie from Curley's revenge, which would entail much pain on Lennie's part, George quickly kills Lennie with a Luger pistol. Slim and George then go for a drink to settle George's nerves. The last line of the book is Carlson, the ranch worker who kills Candy's old dog in a fashion similar to Lennie's killing (which foreshadows his death) is talking to Curley saying, "Now what the hell do you suppose is eatin' them two guys" showing that both characters never learned the value of compassion and friendship.

Template:Endspoiler

Characters

The principal characters in the novel are George, a shrewd and tough farmhand, and Lennie, who is intellectually disabled but incredibly strong and unusually tall. George takes care of Lennie and constantly bemoans this fact. "God a'mighty, If it wasn't for you, I could live so easily," (Steinbeck 2000:12) he repeatedly asserts. However, the impression is given that their relationship is more symbiotic than that as the book moves on. The two dream of getting a place of their own. This dream includes a hutch full of rabbits, which Lennie will get to tend. The rabbits are extremely important to Lennie.

Curley's wife appears to be a manipulative woman but actually suffers a great deal under her husband, whom she married to spite her mother. She is the only female on the ranch and her interaction with the male ranch-hands causes her to be labelled a 'tart', albeit she seeks what many of the others lack, friendship. She naivly clings to an impossible dream of becoming an actress and tells Lennie of her lost opportunities. Her intense unhappiness manifests itself in her cruel treatment of the men underneath her as shown in her threat to Crooks: "I could get you hung up on a tree so easy it ain't even funny." Her character remains nameless throughout the story, further adding to the impression that she is treated like Curley's property.

Candy is an old, crippled swamper who comes to share in George and Lennie's dream. He is a vulnerable character. Candy received a $250 bonus for losing his hand in a machine. This money along with additional savings earn him a place in George and Lennie's dream farm, as Candy can pay for about half the cost. It is assumed he is only kept on the farm due to his disability; the ranch is responsible for his uselessness. He also owns a dog, which is shot and killed by Carlson to foreshadow another character's death.

Crooks is an isolated, "Negro" ranch-hand who is mistreated and excluded by the other men on the farm. In turn, he excludes himself from the other ranch-hands and isolates himself. He is very skillful and constantly wins the horseshoe game that is played on the ranch, causing more negative comments to head his way.

Curley is the violent son of the Boss, an ex-boxer who frequently threatens Lennie and is very insecure about his wife, whom he constantly accuses of flirting.

Slim, an idea listic and unnatural character, is seen as the moral yardstick.

Minor characters include Carlson, and the other farmhands, and Lennie's Aunt Clara, who appears in Lennie's illusion. The other illusion features a rabbit which berates Lennie on his actions, exposing his deepest fear - that he will not be able to tend the rabbits.

Notes

Steinbeck wrote this book, along with The Grapes of Wrath, in what is now Monte Sereno, California, in his home at 16250 Greenwood Lane.

The novel was banned from various American school libraries or curricula in 1993 and 1994 for "promoting euthanasia" but remains required reading in many other American high school and middle school English courses. Also, many students are studying the novel for GCSE English Literature in England and Wales, Standard Grade in Scotland and the Leaving Certificate in Ireland. It is also studied in several high schools in Victoria, Australia as part of the leadup to the completion of a VCE (Victorian Certificate of Education).

Steinbeck's dog ate an early manuscript of the novel.[1]

Adaptations

Films

The novel was made into five films:

A 1939 film, Of Mice and Men starring Lon Chaney Jr. (Lennie) and Burgess Meredith (George), directed by Lewis Milestone

A 1970 TV movie

A Turkish 1975 TV movie

A 1981 TV movie, Of Mice and Men starring Randy Quaid (Lennie) and Robert Blake (George), Ted Neeley (Curley), directed by Reza Badiyi

A 1992 film, Of Mice and Men, starring John Malkovich (Lennie) and Gary Sinise (George), directed by Gary Sinise.

Opera

Carlisle Floyd wrote an opera based on this novel in 1970. The opera features The Narrator, a character who is not found in the book.

Play

Stage adaptations have also been produced.

The original production was produced by Sam H. Harris, and it opened on November 23rd, 1937, in the Music Box Theatre on Broadway. It ran for 207 performances, and starred Wallace Ford as George and Broderick Crawford as Lennie. Also of note, the role of Crooks was performed by Leigh Whipper, the first African-American member of the Actors' Equity Association. It was chosen as Best Play of the 1937-38 season by the New York Drama Critics' Circle. (source: Critics' Prize Plays, World Publishing Company, 1945)

The play was famously revived in a 1974 Broadway production staring Kevin Conway as George and James Earl Jones as Lennie. Noted stage actress Pamela Blair played Curley's Wife in this production.

In the early 1990s, the Steppenwolf Theatre Company mounted a production with Gary Sinise and John Malkovich playing the roles of George and Lennie respectively.

Other references

Characters similar to George and Lennie have been popular since the publication of "Of Mice and Men". For example, the cartoon duo Pinky and the Brain are also somewhat similar to Lennie and George, respectively. In a classic Bugs Bunny cartoon, Bugs encounters an abominable snowman, a huge, but simple minded giant who grabs and proceeds to put Bugs in a crushing hug saying "What a cute little bunny rabbit. I'm gonna love him and squeeze him and call him George". This could be a reference to Lennie's love of bunnies, slowness, or large size, and a reference to the book's other protagonist, George Milton.

Another reference appears in the film Gremlins 2. Although it did not arrise in the film two of the original mogwai that appear are called Lenny and George by the creators of the film, as they both were designed to physically resemble them.

The title "Of Mice and Men" is popular in scientific journals whenever discrepancies between animal models and human subjects arise. It rarely refers to the contents of Steinbeck's novel. The-work in-progress names of the Transformers: Cybertron characters Crumplezone and Ransack were Lennie and George, which interestingly enough left an impact on the Japanese naming for the two - Landbullet and Gasket. In 2006, Something Awful put up a Homestar Runner parody as part of their Flash Tub. In it, Strong Mad's character played the role of Lenny, killing a mouse (Played by a miniature The Cheat), then a lady resembling Marzipan. Strong Bad's character, called "Dong Dad," holds up a gun and tells "Stongy" to close his eyes while he tells him about the rabbits. American thrash metal band Megadeth wrote a song called Of Mice and Men, but it had nothing to do with the book.

The alternated title, "Of Mice and Women" has also become popular for a wild variety of topics, from cure for breast cancer (developed with the help of experiments on mice) to female aggression.de:Von Mäusen und Menschen fr:Des souris et des hommes he:על עכברים ואנשים nl:Of Mice and Men