Of Mice and Men

Summary

Of Mice and Men takes place over a few days on a ranch near Soledad in California's Salinas Valley during the Depression. George Milton, small and sharp, and Lennie Small, a huge, immensely strong man with an intellectual disability and the mind of a child, are itinerant ranch hands who travel together, unusual among solitary migrant workers. They have fled a job in Weed after Lennie, who loves to stroke soft things, grabbed a girl's dress and would not let go, and she accused him of rape. Camped by the Salinas River the night before starting work, George scolds Lennie for carrying a dead mouse and tells him to come back to this spot and hide if he gets into trouble. At Lennie's request he repeats the story of their dream: one day they will buy a little farm, live off the fat of the land, and Lennie will tend the rabbits. At the ranch they meet the old swamper Candy, who lost a hand in an accident and owns an ancient, smelly dog; the boss; his aggressive son Curley, a small former boxer, recently married and jealous; Curley's lonely, flirtatious wife, who is never named; Slim, the respected jerkline skinner; and Crooks, the Black stable buck, crippled by a horse's kick and forced to live alone. Carlson persuades Candy to let him shoot the old dog, and Candy later says he wishes he had done it himself. Overhearing the dream, Candy offers his savings, and suddenly the farm seems within reach; even Crooks briefly asks to join. When Curley attacks Lennie, Lennie, at George's word, crushes Curley's hand; Slim persuades Curley to say it was caught in a machine. Slim gives Lennie a puppy, which Lennie accidentally kills by petting it too hard. In the barn Curley's wife confides her disappointed dreams of Hollywood and invites Lennie to stroke her hair; when she panics, Lennie, trying to silence her, breaks her neck. He flees to the river. As Curley leads a lynch mob, George finds Lennie first, tells him the dream once more, and shoots him in the back of the head with Carlson's Luger. Slim leads George away, telling him he had to do it, while Carlson wonders what is eating them.

Plot or Argument

• Section 1: The river

  George and Lennie camp by the Salinas River; the dead mouse, the trouble at Weed, and the dream of the farm.

• Section 2: The bunkhouse

  Arrival at the ranch; Candy, the boss, Curley, Curley's wife and Slim.

• Section 3: The dog and the dream

  Candy's dog is shot; Candy joins the dream; Lennie crushes Curley's hand.

• Section 4: Crooks's room

  Lennie visits Crooks; Crooks's loneliness and brief hope; Curley's wife threatens him.

• Section 5: The barn

  Lennie kills the puppy and then accidentally kills Curley's wife; the dream collapses.

• Section 6: Back to the river

  Lennie hides by the river; George shoots him as the mob approaches.

Characters

• George Milton, protagonist

  Quick, protective ranch hand who travels with and cares for Lennie.

• Lennie Small, George's companion

  Huge, gentle, intellectually disabled man who does not know his own strength.

• Candy, old swamper

  Aged, one-handed ranch worker whose dog is shot and who joins the dream.

• Crooks, stable buck

  Black worker with a crooked back, isolated by racial prejudice.

• Curley, boss's son

  Belligerent, jealous former boxer.

• Curley's wife, unnamed young woman

  Lonely woman whose thwarted dreams and isolation end in her death.

• Slim, jerkline skinner

  Respected, perceptive worker who understands George.

• Carlson, ranch hand

  Callous worker who shoots Candy's dog with his Luger.

Lessons

• Friendship against loneliness

  George and Lennie's bond is rare in a world of solitary workers, and nearly everyone else on the ranch is desperately alone. The novella shows companionship as both refuge and burden.

  • Why does George stay with Lennie?
  • Who is the loneliest character on the ranch?

• Dreams sustain and break

  The dream of the farm keeps the men going, and its collapse is the tragedy. Steinbeck shows how hope is both necessary and fragile for the poor.

  • Did George ever believe in the farm?
  • Why does Crooks give up the dream so quickly?

• Mercy and violence

  The shooting of Candy's dog anticipates George's killing of Lennie. The book asks whether killing can be an act of love and what society's failure to care for the vulnerable forces on individuals.

  • Was George right to shoot Lennie?
  • What were the alternatives in 1930s California?
  • How does the dog scene shape our response to the ending?

Context

Set during the Great Depression, the novella reflects the life of itinerant agricultural workers in California, whom Steinbeck had worked alongside. It also reflects the era's treatment of people with intellectual disabilities, often institutionalised or left without support, and pervasive racial segregation.

Composition

Steinbeck conceived it as a 'play-novelette', a novel that could be staged directly. An early draft was famously chewed up by his dog. It was published in 1937 and adapted for Broadway the same year.

Reception

An immediate bestseller and Book-of-the-Month Club selection, it has been widely taught and also frequently challenged or banned for language and violence. It was filmed in 1939 and 1992.

Comparisons

• cannery-row

  Both portray marginal Californian men; Frankie in Cannery Row and Lennie show Steinbeck's concern for intellectually disabled people in a world without care.

• east-of-eden

  Steinbeck's Salinas Valley appears in both, as do questions of brotherhood and responsibility.

• twelve-angry-men

  Both mid-century American works confront prejudice and mob justice toward a vulnerable defendant.

• don-quixote

  George and Lennie, like Quixote and Sancho, are a mismatched pair sustained by a shared dream.

• the-death-of-ivan-ilyich

  Both raise questions about mercy, suffering and the end of life, from opposite social worlds.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The opening and closing scenes at the same pool on the Salinas River in Sections 1 and 6. George tells Lennie to return there if he gets into trouble, and the book keeps that appointment.
• The dead mouse in Lennie's pocket in Section 1, the puppy in Section 5, and the soft hair of Curley's wife in the barn. Track how each soft thing Lennie strokes ends.
• Carlson's shooting of Candy's old dog with his Luger in Section 3, and Candy's later regret that he did not do it himself. Compare the place and manner of that shot with George's in Section 6.
• Each time George tells or Lennie begs for the story of the little farm and the rabbits, and who else is drawn in by it: Candy in Section 3, Crooks briefly in Section 4.
• Crooks's room off the barn in Section 4, the only private space on the ranch, and how quickly his hope in the dream collapses when Curley's wife threatens him.

Key terms and names

Soledad

The town near the ranch, whose Spanish name means solitude. Nearly every person on this ranch is alone, which makes George and Lennie's travelling together seem strange to the boss and to Slim.

Weed

The town to the north where Lennie seized a girl's dress and would not let go, so that the two had to flee. The incident is told in Section 1 and repeats itself with Curley's wife in Section 5.

Bindle

The blanket roll in which a migrant worker carries all he owns. George and Lennie arrive at the ranch with their bindles, marking them as men without a home of their own.

Swamper

Candy's job of cleaning out the bunkhouse and doing odd work. It is the work given to an old man who has lost a hand, and Candy fears that when he can no longer do it he will be put out like his dog.

Jerkline skinner

The driver who handles a long team of mules with a single line, Slim's job. The skill gives Slim an authority on the ranch that even the boss's son must respect.

Stable buck

Crooks's job tending the horses and harness. Because he is Black he must also live apart in the harness room, shut out of the bunkhouse and its card games.

The little farm

The place George describes to Lennie, with a vegetable patch, a few animals, and rabbits for Lennie to tend. It is the hope that holds the friendship together and the hope that Candy's savings briefly make real.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Why did George and Lennie leave Weed, and what does George tell Lennie to do if he gets into trouble at the new ranch?
2. Comprehension How does Carlson persuade Candy to let him shoot the old dog in Section 3, and what does Candy say about it afterward?
3. Comprehension What happens in the barn in Section 5, from the dead puppy to Lennie's flight, and how do Candy and George react when they find Curley's wife?
4. Interpretation George often complains that he could live an easy life without Lennie. Why does he keep travelling with him, and what does Slim understand about this that the boss does not?
5. Interpretation Crooks first mocks the dream of the farm in Section 4, then asks to join it, then takes back his request. What changes his mind each time?
6. Interpretation Curley's wife is never given a name. What does Steinbeck accomplish by this, and how does her conversation with Lennie in the barn change the way a reader sees her?
7. Interpretation In Section 6 George tells Lennie the story of the farm one last time before he fires. Is the telling an act of mercy, a goodbye, or something George needs for himself?
8. Big Question Was George right to kill Lennie before Curley's mob could reach him? What else could a man in George's place have done, and what would each choice have cost?

Faith Connections

• Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 (Scripture)

  The Preacher says two are better than one, for if one falls the other lifts him up, and woe to the one who is alone. The ranch is full of men who are alone, and George and Lennie's partnership is the exception that the other men cannot quite understand.

• Genesis 4:9 (Scripture)

  Cain asks whether he is his brother's keeper. George, who is no blood relation to Lennie, answers that question with his life, and the novella asks how far such keeping can go when the world offers no help.

• Proverbs 13:12 (Scripture)

  Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but desire fulfilled is a tree of life. The farm is that kind of hope for George, Lennie, Candy and Crooks, and Section 5 shows what happens when it is finally lost.

• Robert Burns, To a Mouse (1785) (Great Conversation)

  Steinbeck took his title from Burns's poem about a ploughman who overturns a field mouse's nest, observing that the plans of mice and men alike often go wrong. The farm George and Lennie plan, and Lennie's habit of killing the mice he loves, both follow the poem's pattern.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Men who work the ranches are solitary, and a world of solitary men has no place for the weak: the old dog is shot, Candy fears being put out, Crooks is shut in the harness room, and Curley's wife has no one to talk to. George and Lennie's friendship and their dream of a farm are the only defense against that world. But Lennie's strength and need for soft things cannot be controlled, and the society around them answers his accident only with a lynch mob. Therefore the friendship ends in the one act George can still choose, and the book leaves the reader asking whether that act was love or defeat.

Rhetorical device: foreshadowing. Carlson's shooting of Candy's dog in Section 3, done with a Luger to the back of the head, prepares exactly the way George kills Lennie in Section 6, and Candy's regret that he let a stranger do it explains why George insists on doing it himself.

Debate: Resolved: George's killing of Lennie in Section 6 was an act of mercy.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Trace the pattern of soft things Lennie strokes and kills, from the mouse in Section 1 to Curley's wife in Section 5, and argue what this pattern says about whether George could ever have protected Lennie, or others from him.

Comparison with Don Quixote: George and Lennie, like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, are a mismatched pair held together by a dream the world will not grant. Compare the dream of the farm with Quixote's dream of knighthood and argue which story treats its dreamers more mercifully.

Medical Lens

The novella is widely used in discussions of intellectual disability, caregiving and end-of-life ethics. Lennie's disability is portrayed with sympathy but also through period language and assumptions; George functions as an unpaid lifelong carer in a society with no supports beyond institutions and lynch law. The shooting of Candy's old dog and Candy's regret that he did not do it himself prefigure George's killing of Lennie, and both scenes are often discussed in relation to euthanasia and mercy killing, though the novella's situation is not a medical one. Crooks's spinal injury from a horse's kick, his liniment and chronic pain, and Candy's lost hand and fear of being discarded in old age, add further strands on disability, ageing and work.

• Section 1

  George describes the incident at Weed and Lennie's compulsion to stroke soft things; he rehearses what Lennie must do if in trouble.

  Disability DeformityNursing Caregiving
• Section 3

  Carlson shoots Candy's old dog; Candy later wishes he had done it himself.

  Medical EthicsDeath DyingAging Senescence
• Section 3

  Lennie crushes Curley's hand; the injury is covered up as a machine accident and Curley is taken to the doctor.

  Pain
• Section 4

  Crooks rubs liniment into his crooked back in his solitary room.

  Disability DeformityPain
• Section 6

  George kills Lennie to spare him the lynch mob.

  Medical EthicsDeath Dying

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Compare Candy's dog and Lennie's death. Is the novella's parallel an argument, an irony or a trap?

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation between George and Slim about what George should do with Lennie, set before the tragedy.

• Classroom

  Trace how each character on the ranch is isolated, and by what.

Further Reading

• The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

• The Harvest Gypsies, John Steinbeck

  Steinbeck's 1936 journalism on migrant workers.

• John Steinbeck, Writer, Jackson J. Benson