Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck (Pascal Covici 1937)

Because I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you!

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During the Great Depression, Steinbeck reported for the San Francisco News on the plight of migrant farmers who had escaped the Southwest Dustbowl only to find themselves in squatters’ camps in California. This novel focuses on the characters between these two situations: they have farm work, but only just. They cling to jobs in constant fear of “getting canned”; their lives are hard, competitive and, above all, solitary. Except, that is, for Lennie and George’s, because they travel and work together. The strangeness of this is commented on by others: “I hardly never seen two guys travel together” because most men in their situation “never seem to give a damn about nobody”. What makes them different? Lennie has a mental disability but is immensely physically powerful; George is small and quick-witted, and looked up to by his childlike companion. He has made a promise of some kind to Lennie’s Aunt Clara, but this is not really what binds the two. Companionship does. However, their relationship is fraught by Lennie’s inability to judge or control his strength and it is increasingly clear this threatens their plans for the future. ‘The American Dream’ looms large in this story, but these two know exactly how they’re going to realise it. And, along the way, other lonely characters are beguiled by George and Lennie’s certainty, and how close they are to “livin’ off the fatta the lan’”.

Steinbeck conveys the tension of life on the ranch with alarming vividness. Its sparseness and masculinity allow almost no room for emotional connection between characters; instead, relationships are infected by suspicion, fear and the need to survive. There is also racism, sexism and the American version of class struggle. “The Boss” – the owner of this particular farm – pushes his farm hands hard while allowing them precious little comfort or pay. His son, Curley, is dangerously short-tempered, pugnacious and insecure. Into this tinderbox of character and setting Steinbeck throws Curley’s wife (deliberately unnamed), who is pretty, lonely and has dreams of her own. The tension increases.

One aspect of this well-crafted novel that is easy to overlook is Steinbeck’s descriptions of nature. The beauty of rural California – specifically, the Salinas Valley, where Steinbeck grew up – provides an intensifying contrast to the frequent ugliness of the human interactions. In the opening scene, by the “deep and green” river, “the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray, sculptured stones” and the narrator picks out the “spread pads of dogs” and “split-wedge tracks of deer” in the earth where animals have come to drink. It is to this sanctuary that the protagonists eventually return. Just before this, Steinbeck uses nature to enhance the sense of rising panic: the horses in a barn “chewed the straw of their bedding and they clashed the chains of their halters” in anticipation of a terrible discovery.

The ultimate proof of Steinbeck’s skill is the conviction on closing the book that a dreadful, destructive act is also the right one.