Dreaming Together

People need other people to talk to and rely upon in order for them to dream. In a practical sense, George takes care of Lennie in John Steinbeck’s novel, Of Mice and Men. George gives Lennie food, gets Lennie work, and tells him what to do in situations that are beyond Lennie’s capabilities. However, Lennie helps George spiritually just as much. As Crooks remarks to Lennie“‘I seen it over an’ over -- a guy talkin’ to another guy and it don’t make no difference if he don’t hear or understand. The thing is, they’re talkin’, or their settin’ still not talkin’...George can tell you screwy things, and it don’t matter. It’s just the talking. It’s just bein’ with another guy. That’s all’” (78). The dream of the farm becomes a little more real every time George tells it to Lennie. As he says at the end of the book, “‘ I think I knowed we’d never do her. He [Lennie] usta like to hear about it so much I got to thinking maybe we would’” (103).

Candy’s dog serves a similar role for him, but when Carlson kills him Candy becomes depressed.  However, when George and Lennie tell him about their farm he finds new people to be with and a new dream to hope for. Crooks, who because he is the only black person in the area is desperate for some company, also is able to dream of the farm as long as Candy and Lennie come to his room. However, when they leave, the dream leaves with them. Crooks can not carry it when he is alone. Similarly, Curley’s wife, who is also unhappy and lonely, living on the ranch with just Curley to talk to, shares her own dream with Lennie in the barn: “‘Coulda been in the movies, an’ had nice clothes-- all them nice clothes like they wear. An’ I coulda sat in them big hotels, an’ had pitchers took of me… Because this guy says I was a natural’” (97). She needs someone who will listen to her without being judgemental to dream again. After Lennie accidentally kills Curley’s wife and the farmhands set out to hunt him down “Old Candy [lies] down in the hay and cover[s] his eyes with his arm” (108). Candy is not this upset because of his strong affection for Lennie in particular; he has only known Lennie for two days. Candy knows that without Lennie the dream of the farm cannot survive. When George shoots Lennie, he tells him the story of the land for the last time, and afterwards he is so upset that he shakes and can only repeat back what others say to him (117-118). While George did care for Lennie as a person, like Candy he is not mourning the loss of a man so much as a loss of a future.

I would certainly recommend Of Mice and Men. Within the novel Steinbeck manages to capture life as a farm hand, a heart-breaking friendship between two men, and several lovely nature descriptions within just 118 pages. It does not get more pithy than that. Steinbeck also has a wonderful way with layering description within the story to emphasize the action that is taking place. In the first chapter he uses a campfire that follows George and Lennie’s interactions and similar patterns continue throughout the book. For example, in the last chapter Steinbeck intersperses Lennie and Curley’s wife’s conversation with the sounds of the horses and the play of sunlight in the barn. This technique subtly builds tension without slowing down the book too much.

In the process of reading this books I was strongly influenced by Flannery O’Connor because one of her main focuses was the building of character through detail and that was especially present in this particular novel. In some cases Steinbeck builds characters through comparing and contrasting: Lennie and George both dress identically, but Lennie is “a huge man, shapeless of face…” while George is “small and quick” (2). In other places he spends the time on description to explain to make a reader understand why even a minor character might be viewed in a certain way. To introduce the character Slim Steinbeck writes “When he had finished combing his hair he moved into the room, and he moved with a majesty only achieved by royalty and master craftsmen. He was a jerkline skinner, the prince of the ranch, capable of driving ten, sixteen, even twenty mules with a single line to the leaders...His authority was so great that his word was taken on any subject, be it politics or love” (37). After reading Flannery O’Connor’s piece, I found myself paying more attention to these characterizations, especially to what details Steinbeck chose to put in and which he chose not to.

The Impossibility of Rabbits

One thing never changes in the novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck: Lennie’s obsession with rabbits. He might forget where he and George are working the next morning,or how he is supposed to act around his boss, but he always remembers the rabbits (5). Every time George tells the story of the farm they might someday own, Lennie’s favorite part is the description of how he will take care of the rabbits and feed them alfalfa (62-64) and over the course of the novel he mentions tending the rabbits more than ten times. When George wants to scare Lennie into behaving he says “‘But you ain’t going to get in no trouble, because if you do I won’t let you tend the rabbits’” because not being able to tend the rabbits is the worst consequence he can think of (17).

The reader knows that Lennie loves soft things; throughout the book he pets mice, puppies, velvet, and a woman’s hair, but the reader never really learns why he is so attracted to rabbits in particular. Sitting in the barn with Lennie, Curley’s wife, the “loose” wife of the boss’s son, asks him “‘ What makes you so nuts about rabbits?’” , but all Lennie says in response is “‘ I like to pet nice things. Once at a fair I seen some of them long-hair rabbits. An’ they was nice, you bet’” (98). So why do the rabbits keep coming up? The only real rabbits in the book are wild ones that “come out of the brush to sit on the sand in the evening” and sit there “as quietly as little gray sculptured stones”(1,2). These mentions of sand and stones do not seem particularly soft. This incongruity hints at the impossibility of  George and Lennie’s farm. Like the softness of a rabbit, the farm is too good to be true, it can’t exist.

At the very end of the book, when Lennie has destroyed any chance the men might have had of getting their farm, it is a rabbit who cruelly breaks the bad news to him: “from out of Lennie’s head there came a gigantic rabbit…’Tend rabbits,’it said scornfully.’You crazy bastard. You ain’t fit to lick the boots of no rabbit. You’d forget ‘em and let ‘em go hungry. That’s what you’d do’” (112). Lennie will never be able to remember his responsibilities or pet something soft without ruining it, while George will never get to own a farm. The rabbits hint at this at the first page of the novel, and say it out loud by the end.

The Promised Land

Throughout John Steinbeck’s novel, Of Mice and Men, Lennie begs George to tell him the story of how the two of them will someday have their own little farm to work on. Eventually Lennie shares the story with Candy, the old handyman, and Crooks, the African-American stable buck, who both work at the same ranch as George and Lennie. Every time anyone brings up the farm, they speak of it in the most reverential of tones. When George describes it while he and Lennie are camping beside the river his “voice [becomes] deeper. He repeat[s] his words rhythmically as though he had said them many times before” (14). Likewise, describing the piece of land entrances whoever listens. When George again describes the farm while Lennie and Candy are hanging out in the bunkhouse, they both listen “eagerly” with “wide eyes”, and afterwards Candy offers to contribute his own money towards buying the farm if George and Lennie will let him live and work there too (62,65). Even cynical Crooks, who has apparently seen “'hundreds of men come by … ‘an every damn one of ‘em’s got a little piece of land in his head'” , is sucked in by the force of George, Lennie, and Candy’s dream and offers to work on the farm for his own keep (81, 84).

Why is the dream of the farm so strong? Crooks describes the land as: “'Just like heaven. Everybody wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody gets to heaven and nobody gets no land'” (81). This idea helps the reader to begin considering the farm in a religious context, but in Steinbeck’s other details the farm seems less like a symbolic heaven and more like a reference to Israel. The farm is literally a “promised land” as George promises over and over again to Lennie that eventually they will own it. Throughout the book, Lennie repeats four times that they will “'live off the fatta the lan’”  and one of his favorite parts of the story is that “'the cream is so God damn thick you got to cut it with a knife and take it out with a spoon'” (15, 63). Both of these phrases are very similar to the idea of a land “flowing with milk and honey”. Additionally, just like the Hebrew slaves, the farmhands are wanderers searching for their freedom. They stay at one job for a few weeks and then move on, still searching. George is wonderstruck when he continues the story to Candy and says “‘S’pose they was a carnival or a circus come to town, or a ball game, or any damn thing’...’We’d just go to her,”...“We wouldn’t ask nobody if we could. Jus’ say ‘we’ll go to her,’an’ we would'” (67). Although he is not a slave, George can still barely contemplate the idea of the complete freedom to make his own decisions. By surrounding the dream of the farm with references to the Hebrew slaves’ journey to Israel, Steinbeck gives the reader the context she needs to understand why owning their own land is so important to the farmhands.

Campfires Spark Relationships

The novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck centers around the relationship between two itinerant farm hands, George and Lennie. Steinbeck introduces that relationship in the first chapter by using the symbolic device of a campfire.

The reader meets the two men as they begin to set up camp for the night beside a river. George establishes his role as the leader of the pair when he orders Lennie to “‘ go get wood. An’ don’t you fool around. It’ll be dark before long’”and as the provider when he starts the fire and cooks the beans that make up their dinner (8, 11). Lennie watches George “explode” with anger through the growing flames of the fire, and when George calms down and realizes how much he has upset Lennie he “look[s] ashamedly at the flames” as if the campfire is the heat of his own anger (11, 12). Then, as the men turn to eating and telling stories, the fire becomes a gentle blaze that “light[s] the trunks of the trees and the curving branches overhead” (13). As George and Lennie prepare for bed and their thoughts turn inward, the motions of the fire continue to match them: “They made their beds on the sand, and as the blaze dropped from the fire the sphere of light grew smaller; the curling branches disappeared and only a faint glimmer showed where the tree trunks were” (17). Finally, as George and Lennie drift off to sleep, the fire sleeps with them: “the red light dim[s] on the coals” (18).

Traditionally, campfires are symbols for togetherness and storytelling. They are homey and comforting, keeping the darkness at bay. Steinbeck taps into that symbolism in this chapter. Lennie and George do not have a home as one might traditionally think of it, but they gain a sense of home from each other. That they both contribute to the campfire, Lennie fetches the wood while George actually lights the fire, demonstrates how, even though it mostly seems like George takes care of Lennie, they both contribute to their relationship. George needs Lennie to talk to and to give him a purpose. The campfire also adds to the arc of the story with in the first chapter. It begins with an idyllic nature scene, George and Lennie come in, there is a bit of conflict and a bit of character development, and then they settle down and the chapter ends with the quiet of nature once again. The fire, which is part of the scenery, but is also built by the two men, helps to carry the reader from the beginning to the end of the chapter.