"Of Mice and Men": A Review

Book cover for "Of Mice and Men"

The story Of Mice and Men, written by John Steinbeck, is a story that produces a great deal of suspense, tragedy, and morals. The book is about two men, George and Lennie, who are living in the tough times of The Great Depression. They are poor, homeless, and are isolated away from society. They struggle to make money but to do so, they often find ranches to work on. One day, Lennie is wanted for unwillingly harming a woman. Because of this, George and Lennie must run away and they run away to the ranch located in the Salinas Valley in California. Here, they meet many other men who have the same problems as them. However, due to the tough times of The Great Depression, money is very hard to earn and George and Lennie earn only $50 a month.

Immediately upon their arrival at the ranch, George and Lennie are welcomed to the family that has been created among the men at the ranch. However, Curley, the boss' son at the ranch, dislikes Lennie due to his very large size. Curley often tries to pick a fight on Lennie and at one point in the story, they fight with Lennie's face being beat up. Lennie breaks Curley's hand but it wasn't on purpose. While Lennie is in the barn located on the ranch, while he is talking to Curley's wife, he accidentally kills her by breaking her neck. Lennie runs away and Curley is wanting to kill him. George goes to find with the rest of the ranch members and decides to kill Lennie himself in a split second before Curley torches Lennie in a more horrible way. Why does George decide to kill Lennie? More on that in a future blog post.

John Steinbeck uses a number of writing techniques to present the story. He does this in a fantastic way. Steinbeck created many unusual events in the story that lead me to wonder why these events happened. For example, why does George kill Lennie? The story also made me wonder, why do they treat Crooks so badly even though he's black? I do realise that this story is set at a time where racism was a big issue, but still. The way Steinbeck presents this story creates scenario's for the reader to put down the book for a second and reflect on the story. This is a very good technique as this made me want to keep reading the story to find out what happens next. This brings me to my next point of suspense. 

Suspense is a technique many authors use because it keeps the reader wondering about the future events that the story has to offer, and it keeps the reader interested to find out what will happen next. Suspense also allows the reader to think about what can possibly happen next in the story. One example in the story is when Lennie runs away and Curley is extremely mad and barges out to find Lennie and kill him. This created suspense for me because I was excited to read whether Lennie was going to survive or not. Another moment that gave me a feeling of suspense was when Curley wanted to fight Lennie. I started thinking to myself, "Are any of the other ranch members going to help Lennie and take down Curley?" But then I realised that they don't want to because if they did, since Curley is the boss' son, they'd be removed from the ranch if they did anything bad to Curley. One other event that gave me a suspense feeling was when Lennie killed Curley's wife. I just had to keep reading because I wanted to know what was going to happen to Lennie. I knew that Lennie's fate was about to be decided because of what he just did.

Another technique Steinbeck used was that he created a very surprising and unexpecting ending to the story. All throughout the story George kept promising to Lennie that they would always stick together even in the toughest of times. George had even made plans with Lennie to own a piece of land on their own. Throughout the story, I personally thought the story was going to end in a happy, pleasant way in which George and Lennie end up owning their own farm and living happily ever after. But no, as soon as the climax of the story occurs, when Lennie kills Curley's wife, everything after that was a tragedy. One that no one expected. That poor man Lennie was shot and killed due to his actions that were brought upon him from his mental disability.

The story "Of Mice and Men" presents an overall great deal of suspense, surprises, and a great deal of questions left by the reader at the end of the story. This story really gets the reader thinking about the events that happen throughout the story. As well, there were moments in the story where I had to pause and reflect on what I had just read because it was just exciting and unexpected. Overall, John Steinbeck has done a great job writing this story and I suggest you read it as well. I give this story a 10/10.

Thanks for reading,

~ Ramez Fares

Sources:

http://www.marshall.edu/library/bannedbooks/Images/miceandmen.gif

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Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men. New York: Penguin, 1937. Print.