Of Mice and Men

Author Information

The 5Ws below draw on the Nobel biography and the cited account of the novella’s development. [6]

John Steinbeck

Steinbeck "came from a family of moderate means" in Salinas and "worked his way through college at Stanford University but never graduated." In 1925 he went to New York, where he tried for a few years to establish himself as a freelance writer, failed, and returned to California. After publishing some novels and short stories, he first became widely known with Tortilla Flat (1935). [2]

He knew the world of this novella first-hand, which is the real answer to the handout's why . Steinbeck based the novella on his own experiences as a teenager working alongside migrant farm workers in the 1910s, before the arrival of the Okies he would later dramatise in The Grapes of Wrath , and he told The New York Times in 1937: [4]

"I was a bindlestiff myself for quite a spell. I worked in the same country that the story is laid in." [4]

The Nobel biography places Of Mice and Men (1937) between In Dubious Battle (1936) and The Long Valley (1938), with The Grapes of Wrath following in 1939, and describes his novels as social novels "dealing with the economic problems of rural labour." [2] That is the link between the man and the book: the economics are not decoration in this novella, they are the engine of the plot.

"for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception" [3]

That was the wording of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature. Steinbeck died in New York City in 1968. [2]

Contextual Information

Choose the context you can support best; the novella offers evidence of genre, history and culture. [6]

Genre

Steinbeck wrote a novella built to be played. It has six chapters arranged as three acts of two, roughly 30,000 words, and reads like a script: scenes happen in real time, in few locations, mostly through dialogue. [4] One critic called the form a "play-novelette," and Steinbeck's stated aim was a novel that could be played from its lines or a play that could be read like a novel. [4] Within months it was staged as written by the Theater Union of San Francisco, opening May 21, 1937 and running about two months; Steinbeck's adapted version then opened on Broadway on November 23, 1937, produced by Sam H. Harris, directed by George S. Kaufman, and ran 207 performances; a film followed in 1939. [4] That dramatic shape is why the book's emotion lands almost entirely through spoken lines rather than narration — and it is a clean, checkable answer for the genre box.

History

The story is set during the Great Depression , among itinerant ranch workers in California who move from job to job and live out of bedrolls, "searching for jobs during the Great Depression." [4] Steinbeck drew on his own teenage years working alongside migrant farm workers before the Dust Bowl migration he later dramatised in The Grapes of Wrath . [4] The economics are the engine of the plot: steady work is scarce, a man can be fired without notice, and buying even a few acres is far beyond a labourer's wages. The novella came out in 1937, in the middle of the Depression, and was chosen as a Book of the Month Club selection before it was published — the largest positive response to any of Steinbeck's work to that date. [4]

Culture

• A segregated West: Crooks sleeps apart from the other men in the harness room and is kept out of the bunkhouse; the threat used against him shows what a white accuser could set in motion.
• Women at the margins: Curley's wife is never given a name and is spoken about before she is allowed to speak, which the story itself finally corrects in the barn.
• Disability before the language existed: Lennie's condition is described with the harsh period words of 1937; modern editions and classrooms read the same behaviour with different vocabulary.
• A contested classroom text: the novella has been banned or challenged repeatedly for vulgarity, profanity, and racial language, and appears on the American Library Association's most-challenged lists. [4]

"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley" [7]

The title comes from Robert Burns's 1785 poem "To a Mouse," in which a ploughman apologises to a mouse whose nest he has destroyed. Steinbeck first called the story Something That Happened , then took the title from the poem after reading it. [4] The culture of the time also shaped the words: the poem's idea that careful plans still come to grief matches a decade in which honest work did not guarantee food.

Characters

"Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world." [1]

Read Curley's wife against Steinbeck's own account of her, which is useful for the group argument but should not be treated as the only meaning: he described her as "not a person, she's a symbol. She has no function, except to be a foil – and a danger to Lennie," and in a later letter to the actress who played her, he wrote that her harsh, flirtatious behaviour is "a method of defense against her fear for isolation and desperate craving for companionship." [4] Both readings — symbol first, then person — are supported; the novella itself finally chooses the second.

Plot

Exposition

A hot evening on the Salinas River, a few miles south of Soledad: two men in denim come down the path in single file, one small and quick, one huge and dragging his feet like a bear. They drink, squabble, and reveal what they are running from — the incident in Weed — and George rehearses the dream Lennie lives for: a little place, cows, pigs, and rabbits. [1]

Ch. 1 • search: "A few miles south of Soledad"

Rising Action

At the ranch the next day: the boss questions them, Curley takes an instant dislike to Lennie, and George warns Lennie away from the boss's son's flirtatious wife. George and Slim talk, and George retells Weed — Lennie held a girl's red dress and would not let go. Candy's old dog is put down by Carlson, and Candy, gutted, offers his life savings toward the farm. Curley attacks Lennie and his hand is crushed. In the stable, Crooks tests the dream and, for a moment, wants in. Curley's wife tells Lennie her Hollywood dream. The farm suddenly feels close enough to buy. [1]

Ch. 2–4 • search: "that glove's fulla vaseline" • "I ought to of shot that dog myself" • "A guy needs somebody to be near him"

Climax

In the barn, Lennie has accidentally killed his puppy. Curley's wife finds him, confesses her loneliness, and lets him stroke her hair; when he does not stop, she panics and screams, and Lennie, frightened, breaks her neck. He covers her with hay and slips away to the river, to the hiding place they agreed on. [1]

Ch. 5 • search: "Please don't do that. George'll be mad"

Falling Action

Candy finds the body and knows the farm is dead; Curley organises a posse to hunt Lennie down; George slips away first. At the pool, Lennie's fear erupts into a hallucination — Aunt Clara and a giant rabbit accuse him of ruining everything — until George arrives and calms him by beginning the dream again. [1]

Ch. 5–6 • search: "Aunt Clara"

Resolution

With the men shouting in the distance, George tells the farm story once more while Lennie looks across the river, then shoots him from behind. Slim understands immediately and leads George away: "You hadda, George. I swear you hadda." Curley and Carlson are left staring after them, unable to read what they have just seen. [1]

Ch. 6 • search: "Look acrost the river, Lennie"

"You hadda, George. I swear you hadda." [1]

Setting

Geographical Location

The action sits in California's Salinas Valley: a green pool on the Salinas River a few miles south of Soledad, with the Gabilan Mountains on one side and the foothills on the other; then a ranch of bunkhouse, barn, harness room, and whitewashed walls; and finally the river pool again. The windows and doors matter — the bunkhouse's solid door, Crooks's square four-paned window, the barn's sliding entrance — because they decide who may enter where. [1]

Ch. 1 • search: "A few miles south of Soledad"

Occupations and Daily Living

Itinerant ranch hands: bucking grain bags, feeding mules and chickens, cleaning stalls, branding, and waiting on the boss's orders. Wages are drawn and spent; Saturdays mean town. Candy sweeps, Crooks tends the horses, Slim drives the mule team, Curley shadows his father's property.

Time Period

Late-1930s California, during the Great Depression, in harvest season — thrashing machines are running, the days are hot, and the shade climbs the hills by evening. The story spans only a few days, from one evening at the pool to the next visit there after the ranch events. [1]

General Environment

The social and emotional weather: loneliness as the default condition, money fear under every decision, a colour line drawn through the harness room, a woman with nowhere to stand, and a hierarchy that runs boss → son → hands. Guides have noted that the town's name, Soledad, is Spanish for "solitude." [4]

"A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River dropped in close to the hillside" [1]

Descriptions That Show, Not Tell

Seen

Water "slipped twinkling over the yellow sands"; crisp sycamore leaves lying deep; rabbits sitting "as quietly as little gray sculptured stones"; evening shade climbing the hills; the whitewashed bunkhouse with eight bunks; the barn stacked to the roof with new hay.

Heard

Footsteps on crisp leaves; a heron beating up river; Lennie snorting at the pool "like a horse"; horseshoes ringing outside the bunkhouse; the posse shouting on the last evening.

Felt

Warm river water; the grit of sand; the hot day cooling into evening; Crooks's liniment; the softness of hair that the story keeps returning to.

Ch. 1 • search: "A few miles south of Soledad"

The Four Lenses

• Plot: The pool is the frame — the men sleep there before the ranch and meet there after it, and the agreed hiding place makes the final meeting inevitable.
• Setting (imagery): Heat, shade, water, and hay carry the mood; the same river that opens in evening calm closes in evening calm.
• Character: Crooks's shed "leaned off the wall of the barn" — his isolation is built into the floor plan. Curley's wife is forever "in the barn" or "in the doorway," a person with no allowed room.
• Symbol: The little farm with the cow and rabbits stands for security itself; the pool is a birthplace and a killing ground at once.

Point of View

Of Mice and Men has no named storyteller. An unseen narrator stands outside the story and reports it in the third person — the "(s)he" form, defined in the handout as when "the narrator is looking in on the person or people being talked about" — in past tense, moving like a camera from scene to scene. [6]

Third Person

The narrator is looking in on the people being talked about. Everything is reported: two men come down the path to the river; Lennie fills his whole head in the water; George raises the gun and his hand shakes. No "I" ever appears, so no character is telling you this — which means you must judge every action yourself.

Evidence • Ch. 1 • search: "A few miles south of Soledad"

Selective Omniscient Narration

The narrator is not strictly limited to one character: stage directions reveal external actions, and occasional narration gives brief access to a character's sensations or thoughts. But the text does not establish unrestricted knowledge of every mind. Lennie's Aunt Clara episode, for example, is explicitly presented as his hallucination rather than proof that the narrator is all-knowing. A careful description is third-person narration with selective shifts in closeness, not simply "omniscient."

Evidence • Ch. 6 • search: "Aunt Clara"

Narrative Distance

The camera stays closest to George and Lennie, especially in Chapter One, where the dream is learned through their bickering. Other characters are initially filtered through what the men say about them: Curley's wife is warned about for chapters before the reader hears her at length in the barn. That distance can make the reader adopt the ranch's suspicion before her account complicates it. This is an effect of the narration; it does not prove a single authorial intention.

Evidence • Ch. 2 • search: "I'm lookin' for Curley" (first time she speaks)

Perspective

How the characters view and process what is happening, as opposed to who narrates it: the same farm dream looks different through each pair of eyes. To Lennie it is rabbits; to George it is freedom from needing anyone's permission; to Crooks it is a trick that has never once paid off; to Candy it is a way not to be discarded. The narrator reports all four views without endorsing one.

"A guy needs somebody to be near him." [1]

Tone

Attitude: the Emotional Scene

Selected scene: the last evening at the pool (Ch. 6), when George shoots Lennie while telling him the farm dream one more time. Ch. 6 • search: "Look acrost the river, Lennie"

Evidence from the story: George does not shout. He answers Lennie's worry ("I ain't mad") and begins the whole catalogue of the farm — the cow, the pigs, the alfalfa, the rabbits — in the same words he used in Chapter One. He waits until Lennie is looking away across the river. Slim's first words afterward justify him: "You hadda, George." The narrator reports the shot in one flat sentence and lets the men's reactions do the rest. [1]

Attitude word: Compassionate — the author's attitude toward this act reads as tender rather than condemnatory. A second defensible reading is Forgiving : the novella never lets anyone be blamed, and Steinbeck himself called his own way of seeing "something that happened." [4] Both are attitude words from the handout's moral list, so either earns the box; say which one you are claiming and give the evidence for it.

"Look acrost the river, Lennie" [1]

The last thing George says before he fires is a direction to look at a place that does not exist yet. The attitude is in that choice: even the killing is framed as the dream.

Mood: What the Reader Feels

The mood is built from short sentences, plain words, animals, water, and quiet before each blow. A reader might find a scene anxious, lonely, hopeful, or shocking, but those are possibilities, not the reaction the assignment requires. Choose a mood word that fits your response and explain what detail produced it. Vulnerable is one tested word from the handout; it can also describe how the dog, puppy, Lennie, and the dream are exposed to harm. [6]

Emotional Sparks: Excerpts and Reaction

The handout gives you four blank quotation lines on p. 2. Here are three brief excerpts to check, each with a chapter/search locator, a mood word, and a model reaction. Record the page from your copy beside each excerpt.

Spark 1 — Ch. 1 Ch. 1 • search: "loneliest guys in the world"

"Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world." [1]

Possible mood word: Isolated . Sample response, not a required feeling: the general phrase "guys like us" can make one speaker's loneliness feel shared; you might instead feel hopeful because George and Lennie have each other.

Spark 2 — Ch. 5 Ch. 5 • search: "I can't talk to nobody but Curley"

"I get lonely… I can't talk to nobody but Curley." [1]

Possible mood word: Vulnerable . Sample response, not a required feeling: her admission can make a reader reconsider the earlier warnings; another reader may remain uneasy because her loneliness does not erase the threat she makes to Crooks.

Spark 3 — Ch. 3 Ch. 3 • search: "I ought to of shot that dog myself"

"I ought to of shot that dog myself" [1]

Possible mood word: Grieved . Sample response, not a required feeling: Candy's regret may feel painful because he wishes he had made the decision himself; the scene may also make a reader wary of the later choice George faces.

Close Reading Vocabulary

Novel Vocabulary

Each entry gives a chapter , the stable anchor, and a search phrase ; add your own edition's page number beside it.

bindle

A travelling worker's bundle of belongings, carried rolled or on a stick. Ch. 1 • search: "unslung his bindle"

jungle-up

To make camp for the night in the brush near water. Ch. 1 • search: "to jungle-up near water"

thrashin'

Machine threshing — the harvest work that is running while the men walk to the ranch. Ch. 1 • search: "thrashin' machines"

bucking grain bags

Lifting and stacking heavy sacks; hard labour George expects the next day. Ch. 1 • search: "buckin' grain bags"

work up a stake / blow a stake

To earn a sum of money, then spend all of it. Ch. 1 • search: "work up a stake"

off the fatta the lan'

Lennie's way of saying that everything they need will simply be there — the dream in three words. Ch. 1 • search: "fatta the lan'"

swamper

The man whose job is cleaning the bunkhouse. Ch. 2 • search: "the old swamper"

jerkline skinner

The driver of a long team of mules; the top hand on a ranch. Ch. 2 • search: "jerkline skinner"

flop

Slang for a cheap bed for the night. Ch. 2 • search: "if a guy don't want a flop"

kewpie doll

A small moulded doll, sold as a souvenir — one of Curley's wife's images of a furnished life. Ch. 2 • search: "kewpie doll lamp"

liniment

A medicinal rub for aches, kept on the shelf with a man's comb and soap. Ch. 2 • search: "bottle of pills, his liniment"

snooker

A cue sport; it is the game Lennie's hallucinated aunt imagines George playing instead of caring for him. Ch. 6 • search: "snooker"

Tested Words From the Character Traits Handout

"The following words will appear on a vocabulary test at the end of the year." ( Character Traits.pdf , p. 2) [6]

Astute

keenly perceptive or discerning; shrewd or cunning

Austere

severe in manner or appearance; uncompromising; strict; forbidding

Bigoted

utterly intolerant of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own

Boorish

unmannered; crude; insensitive

Caustic

severely critical or sarcastic

Convivial

friendly; agreeable

Cordial

courteous and gracious

Debonair

courteous, gracious, and having a sophisticated charm

Degenerate

an immoral or corrupt person

Dissolute

indifferent to moral restraints; given to immoral or improper conduct

Emaciated

abnormally thin or weak, especially because of illness or a lack of food

Grotesque

a very ugly or comically distorted figure, creature, or image

Ingenious

cleverly inventive or resourceful

Obtuse

not quick or alert in perception, feeling, or intellect; not sensitive or observant; dull

Odious

deserving or causing hatred; hateful; detestable. highly offensive; repugnant; disgusting

Petulant

moved to or showing sudden, impatient irritation, especially over some trifling annoyance

Precocious

unusually advanced or mature in development, especially mental development

Provincial

a person who lacks urban sophistication or broad-mindedness

Robust

strong and healthy; hardy; vigorous

Unkempt

uncared-for or neglected; disheveled; messy

Unscrupulous

conscienceless; unprincipled

Urbane

reflecting elegance, sophistication, etc., especially in expression

Vulgar

indecent; obscene; lewd

Tested Words From the Attitude vs. Mood Handout

"The following words will appear on a vocabulary test at the end of the year." ( Attitude vs. Mood.pdf , p. 1) [6] The Cheeky entry is reproduced exactly as it appears in the handout, which breaks off mid-definition.

Ambitious

eagerly desirous of achieving or obtaining success, power, wealth, a specific goal, etc.

Apathetic

having or showing little or no interest, concern, or emotion

Cheeky

boldly rude, impudent, or disrespectful in usually a playful or appealing [the handout's line ends here]

Nauseated

filled with disgust: sickness stemming from the stomach

Ridiculed

speech or action intended to cause contemptuous laughter at a person or thing

Skeptical

doubtful about a particular thing

Vulnerable

capable of or susceptible to being attacked, damaged, or hurt

Tested Words From the Setting Details Handout

The same promise appears in the setting handout: "Some of these words* will also appear in our last unit's vocabulary test" ( Setting Details.pdf , pp. 1–2). [6]

Arid

being without moisture; extremely dry; parched

Barren

not producing or incapable of producing; sterile

Desolate

deprived or destitute of inhabitants; deserted; uninhabited

Enigmatic

a puzzling occurrence, situation, statement, person, etc.; perplexing; mysterious

Foreboding

a strong inner feeling or notion of a future misfortune, evil, etc.; presentiment

Grandiose

affectedly grand or important

Idyllic

portrays an idealized scene of peace, charm, and rustic simplicity

Melancholy

a gloomy state of mind, especially when habitual or prolonged; depression

Ominous

indicating the nature of a future event, for good or evil

Pristine

having its original purity; uncorrupted or unsullied

Sinister

threatening or portending evil, harm, or trouble

Somber

gloomily dark; shadowy; dimly lighted

Sublime

the greatest or supreme degree of goodness

Whimsical

playfully quaint or fanciful, especially in an appealing and amusing way

Zealous

showing great energy or enthusiasm in pursuit of a cause or objective

Theme & Big Ideas

Big Ideas to Consider

Every pick below is on the handout's own Big Idea chart, with the chart's category and page, so your selection can be defended from the source rather than from memory. [6]

• Companionship — Love, p. 1. George and Lennie choose each other; everyone else is alone.
• Friendship — Love and Circle of Life, p. 1. The same idea from a second chart.
• Hope — Love, p. 1; War & Peace, p. 1; Judgement, p. 2. The farm is described, re-described, funded, and finally told one last time.
• Loneliness — Suffering, p. 1. Candy, Crooks, Curley's wife, and the hired hand who earns a stake only to spend it in town again.
• Injustice — Suffering, p. 1; Judgement, p. 2. Curley's privilege, the colour line, a woman with no name, a man who cannot protect himself.
• Power — Survival, p. 1; Judgement, p. 2. Who can hurt whom, and how little it costs those in charge.
• Vulnerability — Survival, p. 1. The dog, the puppy, Lennie, and the dream itself: everything tender is also breakable.
• Fate — Love, p. 1; Judgement, p. 2; Good & Evil, p. 2. The title promises it; the novella spends more time on the people caught in it.
• Grief and Heartbreak — Suffering, p. 1. Candy's dog, then Lennie.
• Guilt — Suffering, p. 1; Judgement, p. 2. Candy's and George's, over the same kind of accident.

Finished Theme Statement

Template from the handout ( Theme & Big Ideas.pdf , p. 2): "A central issue that reappears throughout ____ by ____ is ____. This issue is exemplified when ____ [Plot Point 1 – Beginning] ____, ____ [Plot Point 2 – Middle] ____, and ____ [Plot Point 3 – End] ____. It is at these pivotal moments the reader realizes the theme that ____ meaning that is relevant to but goes beyond the text—this should be a common human concern."

The Ending: What the Text Actually Supports

• Mercy. The posse is minutes away and carries rope. Slim says, "You hadda, George. I swear you hadda," and nobody argues with him. A reading that says something else has to explain why the one character who understands the situation approves of it.
• Ending a dream that could not survive its owner. George has seen the last of it: the money is counted, the woman is dead, and Lennie has already forgotten what he did. The farm existed only for as long as the two of them could repeat it. This reading rests on structure — the last thing George does is narrate the dream again — and it does not require calling the act kind.
• Kindness with a cost. George chooses the method and the moment, and the novella never shows Lennie's relief, because Lennie is shot from behind while looking at a place that does not exist yet. Whether that is mercy or simply the least cruel option available is precisely what the book leaves open.
• Restraint as the point. The narrator reports the shot in one flat sentence and never returns to it. Carlson's closing question — what is wrong with those two — shows that most people in the book never learn what they saw. A group can reasonably argue that the novella delivers its judgement through structure and silence rather than argument, and that any confident moral verdict on George is the reader's, not Steinbeck's.

Questions

1. Why does George shoot Lennie himself?

Suggested answer: because Curley has already organised a posse and would not stop, and because George believes a quick death is better than what Lennie would get from a crowd. Slim, the one man who understands both men, endorses it in a single line — "You hadda, George. I swear you hadda" — while Curley and Carlson never learn what they saw. Compare that with Carlson's closing question, "Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin' them two guys" (Ch. 6): the man who watched the whole thing still cannot read it. Ch. 6 • search: "You hadda, George"

2. Why is Curley's wife never named?

Suggested answer: the novella never gives her a personal name; "Curley's wife" identifies her through her husband's role. That choice can be read as reflecting how the ranch men reduce her to a label, and it shapes how readers first encounter her: through their warnings before hearing her at length in the barn. Her account complicates that first impression without changing the fact that she remains unnamed. Ch. 2 and Ch. 5 • search: "I'm lookin' for Curley"

3. Is the dream ever realistic?

Suggested answer: the dream becomes more concrete when Candy offers his savings, but the figures do not yet add up to the farm's price. In Chapter 3, Candy has about $350; George estimates the place at $600 and says the three of them could save enough within a month if they worked. That calculation makes the plan imaginable, not guaranteed: their wages, continued employment, and the farm's availability all matter. Ch. 3 • search: "six hundred dollars"

4. What is Candy's dog for?

Suggested answer: the dog scene can be read as a parallel to the ending: an old, vulnerable companion is killed by someone close to him, and the survivor is left with regret. Candy's line, "I ought to of shot that dog myself," comes after Carlson has shot the dog; he regrets letting a stranger do it. That later guilt may shape how a reader interprets George's choice, though the two situations are not identical. Ch. 3 • search: "I ought to of shot that dog myself"

5. Why does the story begin and end at the same pool?

Suggested answer: returning to the same river pool gives the novella a frame and makes the ending echo the opening. The setting's repeated description links the scenes, while the changed circumstances and George's final retelling of the farm dream make the return feel different. Notice which details and actions actually recur in your edition rather than assuming every movement is repeated. Ch. 1 and Ch. 6 • search: "A few miles south of Soledad"

6. Was Crooks's hope in Chapter 4 genuine?

Suggested answer: briefly, and the novella lets him say so. He asks whether he might have a small patch of garden on their place, tells them he would help with the rabbits, then immediately retreats into mockery because he has been burned before. Minutes later, threatened with being strung up, the loneliness returns. The pattern — want, joke, shame — repeats, which is why his chapter is the saddest quiet scene in the book. Ch. 4 • search: "A guy needs somebody to be near him"

7. Whose fault is the tragedy?

Suggested answer: several pressures contribute, but readers can weigh them differently. Lennie's grip causes the accident; when Curley's wife screams, he panics and tightens his hold rather than releasing it. Curley's posse makes Lennie's hiding place dangerous, while poverty and isolation shape the characters' limited choices. Steinbeck's descriptions of "something that happened" and "non-teleological thinking" may support a reading that resists a simple moral verdict [4] , but they do not settle questions of responsibility. Make a claim about blame and support it with the scene. Ch. 5 • search: "Please don't do that. George'll be mad"

8. What does the title promise?

Suggested answer: it promises fate, and the novella delivers something more mixed. Burns's ploughman regrets what he could not control; George's plan is undone by an accident none of them planned. But the same story shows careless power doing deliberate damage: Curley's privilege, the colour line drawn through the harness room, a woman with no name. A strong answer says the title names the shape of the plot while the characters supply the moral pressure. Title • search: "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men"