Of Mice and Men What Did George Tell Lennie to Do if He Ever Got Into Trouble Again
It's articulate that John Steinbeck's 1937 novella Of Mice and Men was written to be read every bit a parable. But a parable for what? I mean, what's the lesson it is instruction?
It's not nigh euthanasia. It's non near intellectual disability (what used to be called mental retardation). It's non almost doing what you have to do even if is painful, even though the "god-like" Slim tells George on the concluding page:
"A guy got to sometimes."
And a few lines later:
"Y'all hadda, George. I swear y'all hadda."
Aye, the book is nigh all of those things. But the parable's lesson is deeper, and it has something to do with friendship and with dreams.
Isolated, separate, autonomously
The friendship that George Milton and Lennie Pocket-sized take is, inside their earth, extraordinary. No one else in Of Mice and Men is in a twosome.
Curly and his wife are officially in a twosome, having married, just they are each lone souls wandering through their days. And so is every other character — solitary.
Even Slim, the great hero of the ranch's landscape, is alone. Steinbeck describes him this way:
He was a jerkline skinner, the prince of the ranch, capable of driving x, sixteen, even twenty mules with a single line to the leaders. He was capable of killing a fly on the wheeler'due south butt with a balderdash whip without touching the mule.
In that location was a gravity in his manner and a quiet so profound that all talk stopped when he spoke. His authority was and then swell that his word was taken on whatever bailiwick, be it politics or honey….His hatchet face was ageless. He might accept been thirty-five or fifty. His ear heard more than than was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of agreement beyond thought. His hands, big and lean, were as fragile in their activity as those of a temple dancer.
Like an Achilles or a Hercules, Slim is head and shoulders above everyone else around him. Yet, like everyone else except Lennie and George, he isolated, divide and apart.
His character and talents brand him a champion. Nonetheless, he doesn't ain the ranch. He is, like everyone else, fastened to this land and this job as if the ranch were a prison. Certain, he could become somewhere else, but the state of affairs would exist the same.
He is alone the way Curly is alone and Curly'southward wife and Curly's male parent, the possessor, and Carlson, and Crooks.
"Scared of each other"
As the novel opens, Candy, the handman who lost a hand in a ranch blow, is in a kind of a twosome with his old and smelly canis familiaris.
But, perhaps because of the companionship that he has that others don't have, Processed is forced by Carlson, with Slim'due south approving, to let Carlson take the dog out into the nighttime and shoot it in the back of the caput.
The twosome of George and Lennie is much more unsettling to those on the ranch, mysterious.
George is questioned over and again why they are together. The insinuation is that George is somehow taking advantage of Lennie. Even Slim wants to know, perchance to protect Lennie. Slim says:
"Ain't many guys travel around together. I don't know why. Perhaps ever'body in the whole damn earth is scared of each other."
I recollect that Slim's comment gets to the heart of Steinbeck's parable in Of Mice and Men.
"Kinda used to each other"
Slim notes that it's "kinda funny a cuckoo like him and a smart guy similar you travelin' together."
George defends Lennie as "no cuckoo" and says it isn't so odd that the ii of them travel together since "him and me was both born in Auburn. I knowed his Aunt Clara…When his Aunt Clara died, Lennie simply come along with me out workin'. Got kinda used to each other later a fiddling while."
It may wait, George says, that Lennie is impaired and George is smart. Only he says that, if he were smart, he'd have a place of his own instead of working for other people. As well, the friendship of the ii men isn't i-sided. George benefits too:
"I ain't got no people. I seen the guys that go around on the ranches alone. That ain't no skillful. They don't have no fun. After a long time they get hateful. They get wantin' to fight all the time."
"A hoot in hell"
George and Lennie don't go around on the ranches alone. They are a twosome. They aren't isolated, divide, autonomously.
In the final pages, George, at Lennie's urging, tells again about their friendship, almost how "guys like us got no fambly…make a footling stake an' then they blow it in….own't got nobody in the worl' that gives a hoot in hell almost 'em."
And Lennie interrupts:
"Only not us. Tell virtually us at present."
George starts, "But not us," and Lennie once more interrupts: "Because—" and George goes on: "Because I got you an' —" And Lennie responds in triumph and joy:
"An' I got you. We got each other, that'southward what, that gives a hoot in hell about us."
Because they are a twosome
Peradventure, equally Slim says, everyone "in the whole damn world is scared of each other." But non Lennie and George.
Their friendship, for all the difficulties they take with each other, is a source of fun and joy. They aren't hateful and bitter like those who travel lonely. They experience good about themselves. They feel loved.
This is one aspect of the lesson of Steinbeck's parable. It is through friendship — i.e., through love — that people discover themselves and feel good about themselves.
Yes, George has less freedom because of Lennie and the trouble he gets into. Aye, Lennie has less freedom because George is constantly reining him in. Just these irritations are but irritations.
Because they are a twosome, neither man feels alone, separate, autonomously.
"Our ain"
The other aspect of Steinbeck's lesson is the dream that George relates with corking relish and that Lennie celebrates whenever he hears it.
The dream has to do with an actual identify that's upwards for auction:
"Well, it's ten acres. Got a little win'mill. Got a little shack on it, an' a chicken run. Got a kitchen, orchard, cherries, apples, peaches, 'cots, nuts, got a few berries. They's a place for alfalfa and plenty water to overflowing it. They'a a hog pen —"
"An' rabbits, George."
"No place for rabbits now, but I could easy build a few hutches and you could feed alfalfa to the rabbits."
Over several pages, halfway through the novel, George expands on this dream as Lennie grows more than and more excited, finally saying:
"An' information technology'd be our own, an' nobody could can usa."
"We got fren'south"
And it's not only Lennie who's excited. George'due south own excitement is clear every fourth dimension he talks about his vision. And this excitement is contagious. Showtime, Candy and, and then, Crooks, the crippled blackness stablehand, want to join in with Lennie and George, captivated by the dream.
Indeed, when Curly's married woman, bitter and alone, tells them their hopes are a delusion, Processed stands upwardly to her, telling her that they have a place to get to if she gets them fired.
"An' we got fren'southward, that's what we got. Perchance there was a time when we was scared of getting' canned, but we ain't no more. We got our own lan', and information technology's ours, an' nosotros c'northward become to information technology."
It is a dream, and one that the men aren't able to achieve considering tragedy intervenes. Yet, Steinbeck'south parable is nearly how dreaming and friendship enrich life.
Whatever George and Lennie accept to face on a 24-hour interval-to-day ground is easier because they accept a dream of anytime finding a better life. And, even if they fail to brand information technology a reality — and at that place are many indications in Of Mice and Men that they volition fail — the dream fills their days with wonder, beauty and hope.
Love and hope
Their friendship makes the dream possible. And the dream makes the friendship possible.
Processed and Crooks, hearing the dream, want to join with Lennie and George. They will be, Candy says, "fren's."
The mural described in Steinbeck's novel is difficult and brutal to work. The people set in that landscape are alone, split, apart.
Except for George and Lennie. Their lives are rich and vibrant because they have each other and share their dream.
Prepare in a world where "ever'body…is scared of each other," Of Mice and Men is a novel of love and promise. And, ultimately, tragedy.
Patrick T. Reardon
12.fourteen.21
Source: https://patricktreardon.com/book-review-of-mice-and-men-by-john-steinbeck/
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