Title: Of Mice and Men

Author: John Steinbeck

Published: 1966

The author:

John Steinbeck was born in 1902, in Salinas, California. In 19191 he wrote to the school magazine, and already then showing a talent for writing. He attended Stanford University in California. But he left the university in 1925, without having a degree. After he left, John went to New York to become a journalist. After a short period there, he went back to the west coast.

He didn’t succeed to live of his writing until 1935. Two years later he wrote the book “of mice and men”, that was his first commercial success. After this he wrote “The Grapes of Wrath”, which has been recognised as one of the best American novels ever written.

John Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962. And in 1968 he died, of heart disease.

The setting:

This story takes place in California, a few miles south of Soledad. In the beginning and the end, the story takes place by the Salinas River. “The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool.” By one side of the river, there are mountains. The rest of the book takes place on the ranch.

The time period is the 1930s.

The main characters:

The book is about George and Lennie who are ranch workers. Lennie is very large and strong, but a gentle man with the mind of a child. He can’t remember a thing, ha always forget. “I forgot, Lennie said softly. I tried not to forget. Honest to God I did George.”

He loves to touch soft things, for example a mouse. But he pets them to hard, so they always die. Lennie works on ranches and travels with George, who looks after him.

George is Lennie’s friend, and he’s the one that finds work. George is small and quick, dark of face whit restless eyes. He has strong hands, slender arms and a thin and bony nose. He looks after Lennie and tries to keep him out of trouble, but that aren’t easy.

The plot:

As you already know, George and Lennie are workers that travel together from ranch to ranch to do jobs. Their days aren’t always easy, Lennie create a lot of trouble. When George finally finds a place to work Lennie always screw it up. It isn’t many workers that travel together like George and Lennie. But they have one dream, one dream that keep them together. The dream to get an own place some day, where they could have some chickens and maybe some cows, and rabbits of sauce. It looked like their dream was turning to reality, they hand the most of the money they needed. However, when Lennie loses control of his strength and kill Curleys wife, their hope turn into hopelessness.

The conclusion:

Lennie is based on a real person, a person John knew. They worked alongside with each other for weeks. But he didn’t kill a girl, he killed a ranch foreman. John worked in the same county as the story is laid in. The main reason John had to write the book is maybe to show people how the life of a ranch worker was. Or perhaps it was because he wanted to describe the friendship between people. In every book by John Steinbeck, he shows deep love of humanity.

The author did hold me interested when I first start to read. It was a bit hard to start reading. But when you got into it, it turned out to be quite easy. This was a good book, boring sometimes, but in the end very exciting. To be honest I was very surprised that the book was that interesting. It was boring in the beginning, when they came to the river. When it was just descriptions and talking, and I didn’t really know what it was about. But some pages later when they came to the ranch, and I started to “know” the persons, it started to get more exciting.    

To be honest, I Actually almost loved this book. It was the greatest book I have read for awhile. It wasn’t like other books, I believe the book, in the way it’s written. Very credible wrote, and this could have happened.

The language in the book was good. John Steinbeck has put weight on the language people talk in the area. He writes dialect when people talk, and that gives good variation in the language. And that is absolutely strength. For example “what ya want“, “you gonna”, “I ain’t”, “oughta” and many, many more.

I don’t think the book of mice and men had any weaknesses. Perhaps that it was easy to read, maybe a bit too easy? But it’s not a big deal.

Yeah, I would defiantly recommend it to others. Because if you are going to read a book, it’s good to learn something of it, and not just throw it away when you’re Finnish. And in this book you learn much about friendship, and people.