Of Mice and Men
Literature project
Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck
Introduction summary
John Steinbeck celebrated friendship, both in his life and in his fiction. Friendship is the most enduring relationship in his best work… But Steinbeck’s vision of camaraderie is less markedly an escape from marriage, home, and commitment than an exploration of the parameters of society and self. (Pvii)
… arguably the best of his short novels… commitment between friends that is love at its highest pitch. To read Of Mice and Men as Steinbeck intended is to keep firmly in mind its original title “Something That Happened,” a phrase expressing the non-judgmental acceptance that imprints his best work of the 1930s and early 40s. in the novel Steinbeck in effect tells us that this is the way things are; he called his approach non-teleological thinking, or “is thinking”. “Is thinking” focused not on the ends but on the process of life, the Aristotelean efficient cause of nature. (Pviii)
When reading Of Mice and Men, we are asked to acknowledge the inevitability of a situation in which two men, each with a particular weakness and need, cling to the margins of an unforgiving world. It is a parable about commitment, loneliness, hope, and loss, drawing its power from the fact that these universal truths are grounded in the realistic context of friendship and a shared dream. It is the energy of that friendship, real but hardly sentimental that charges this richly suggestive and emotional text. Of Mice and Men is the middle book in Steinbeck’s trilogy about agricultural labor in California. (Pix)
...for Of Mice and Men he created his own genre, the play/novelette. Of Mice and Men is thus poised on the cusp of two genres, one moribund, the other alive. (Pxvi)
…the clash between a troubled worker and his boss, between the powerless and the elite. What became the climax of his fiction was a confrontation between two of the disenfranchised – Lennie and Curley’s lonely wife – a conflict
Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck
Introduction summary
John Steinbeck celebrated friendship, both in his life and in his fiction. Friendship is the most enduring relationship in his best work… But Steinbeck’s vision of camaraderie is less markedly an escape from marriage, home, and commitment than an exploration of the parameters of society and self. (Pvii)
… arguably the best of his short novels… commitment between friends that is love at its highest pitch. To read Of Mice and Men as Steinbeck intended is to keep firmly in mind its original title “Something That Happened,” a phrase expressing the non-judgmental acceptance that imprints his best work of the 1930s and early 40s. in the novel Steinbeck in effect tells us that this is the way things are; he called his approach non-teleological thinking, or “is thinking”. “Is thinking” focused not on the ends but on the process of life, the Aristotelean efficient cause of nature. (Pviii)
When reading Of Mice and Men, we are asked to acknowledge the inevitability of a situation in which two men, each with a particular weakness and need, cling to the margins of an unforgiving world. It is a parable about commitment, loneliness, hope, and loss, drawing its power from the fact that these universal truths are grounded in the realistic context of friendship and a shared dream. It is the energy of that friendship, real but hardly sentimental that charges this richly suggestive and emotional text. Of Mice and Men is the middle book in Steinbeck’s trilogy about agricultural labor in California. (Pix)
...for Of Mice and Men he created his own genre, the play/novelette. Of Mice and Men is thus poised on the cusp of two genres, one moribund, the other alive. (Pxvi)
…the clash between a troubled worker and his boss, between the powerless and the elite. What became the climax of his fiction was a confrontation between two of the disenfranchised – Lennie and Curley’s lonely wife – a conflict