Novella: Of Mice and Men

Overview
John Steinbeck’s 1937 novella follows two itinerant ranch hands, George Milton and Lennie Small, as they drift through Depression-era California chasing a modest dream: to save enough money to buy a small farm and “live off the fatta the lan’.” The pair’s bond anchors the story, George is sharp and protective; Lennie is physically powerful, cognitively disabled, and drawn to soft things he cannot safely handle. Their fragile hope collides with a world marked by scarcity, suspicion, and loneliness, forming a tightly wound tragedy about friendship, aspiration, and mercy.

Setting and Characters
Set near Soledad and the Salinas River, the landscape is both pastoral and unforgiving. At the ranch where George and Lennie find work, they meet a cross-section of those ground down by the times: Candy, an aging swamper fearful of being cast aside; Slim, a respected mule driver whose calm authority carries moral weight; Carlson, practical and callous; Crooks, the Black stable hand isolated by racism and a crooked spine; and Curley, the boss’s pugnacious son, insecure and eager to prove himself. Curley’s wife, never named, embodies both flirtation and profound loneliness, stranded in a marriage that has shrunken her early Hollywood dreams.

Rising Action
George and Lennie arrive after fleeing Weed, where Lennie’s innocent but alarming habit of touching soft fabric led to accusations and vigilante threats. At the ranch they secure work bucking barley. George repeats their shared vision each night, soothing Lennie with the promise of tending rabbits. When Carlson pressures Candy to let him shoot Candy’s ancient dog, the euthanasia divides the bunkhouse and foreshadows later choices about mercy. After Curley provokes a fight, Lennie crushes his hand; Slim compels Curley to keep quiet, preserving the men’s jobs. Hearing George and Lennie’s plan, Candy offers his life savings to join them, briefly transforming fantasy into a near-real possibility. In the stable, Crooks allows himself a moment of hope when he hears of the plan, then recoils as the realities of prejudice and power reassert themselves.

Climax and Resolution
Alone in the barn, Lennie accidentally kills his puppy while petting it. Curley’s wife enters seeking conversation; she confides her dashed ambitions and her own isolation. Inviting Lennie to touch her hair, she panics when he musses it, and his fear-driven grip breaks her neck. The ranch erupts into a manhunt led by Curley, intent on violent revenge. George finds Lennie at their prearranged meeting spot by the river. To spare him from a lynching and terror, George retells the farm dream one last time and shoots Lennie in the back of the head with Carlson’s Luger. Slim recognizes the cost of the act and consoles George, while others remain baffled by the depth of the bond they have witnessed.

Themes and Motifs
The novella probes the fragility of the American Dream under economic and social pressures, showing how poverty, prejudice, and power imbalances thwart even the humblest aspirations. Companionship stands against the omnipresent loneliness of itinerant labor, Soledad’s name itself echoes solitude. Mercy killing recurs from Candy’s dog to Lennie, forcing questions about responsibility, dignity, and love within a harsh moral landscape. The rabbits symbolize innocent hope, forever deferred. The title, taken from Robert Burns’s “To a Mouse,” underscores that the best-laid plans of both mice and men often go awry, leaving lives subject to chance, vulnerability, and the predatory nature of the world.