OF MICE AND MEN John Steinbeck Fiche de lecture

Of Mice and men is a novel by John Steinbeck published in 1937. It’s a tragedy written in the third-person singular and in a past tense. The narrator is omniscient It deals with the American Dream of two friends, George and Lennie, who are migrant workers. Lennie has a mental disability and George looks after him. At the beginning of the book, it is said that they got fired of a ranch because Lennie was accused of a rape. They are walking on the road, on their way to another farm. It is a Friday and it’s around midday. Their friendship seems overwhelmingly strong: as George starts to complain about the fact that his life would be easier without Lennie, Lennie asks him to tell the story of their future ranch. This story brings peace to both of them and we easily understand that George needs Lennie and his childish mind to believe in it. They need each others: Lennie, because of his mental disease, needs George, and George needs Lennie to trust in something: their American Dream: owning a little piece of land. Lennie is described as a strong and tall man who loves animals but keeps grinding them while he wants to caress them.  They arrive at the ranch and George tells Lennie that if he gets into trouble, he has to hide

himself in the brush were they spent the night, and wait for him. The ranch is full of different people, and it rapidly seems to be a metaphor of the American society at that time. There is Slim, kind of a legend “prince of the ranch”, respected for his professional skill, he is also the law figure of the ranch as the preposition “beyond”, often repeated concerning him, can summarize this character. There is also Curly, the boss’s son, who epitomizes a certain class society: he and his father don’t wear the same clothes as the workers. There is also his wife, who has no name, she may be the symbol of all women at that time, with no rights, she didn’t achieve her American dream, becoming an actress in Hollywood. There is Crooks, the Blackman, is really alone, because of the colour of his skin, he reads and thinks. And finally there is Carlson, a ranch-hand. There are not many twists and turns in the story: Lennie kills a puppie gave him and right after that he kills Curley’s wife while he was trying to caress her hair. But because of his strength, she started to be afraid and he panicked and strangled her. When he understands what he has done, he goes to the brush, waits for George and starts to have hallucinations as he is talking to his dead aunt Clara. George quickly understands

what happened and go meet him. It is Sunday. He tells Lennie the story of their ranch to calm him down, promises him that he could feed the rabbits and then shoots him: a ball in the back of his head. He doesn’t do it by cruelty but because he knows that if he doesn’t do it, somebody else will, and he prefers Lennie to be killed by him rather than by a stranger, recalling what Candy told him about the death of his old dog, killed by Carlson. In fact, the book is full of parallelisms and repetitions, for instance we know right from the beginning of the book the outcome, thanks to the facts that prefigure it. This book is really short and so the action: three days. It doesn’t really focus on the story, which is not tense, but it is a book full of great themes of life: lost paradise, loneliness, the impossibility to achieve the American dream, the predatory nature of human existence, fraternity and idealized male friendship, the corrupting power of women, strength and weakness. That makes the book really interesting to analyse, and comparable to a play by its shortness and dramatic tone as well as by its painting of the human nature.