Of Mice and Men is a great tale of friendship between two friends named George and Lennie that tells of all the struggles they had to go through just to get to live the life they’ve always dreamed about. George often said “I promised Lennie’s Aunt Clara that I would take care of Lennie when she died,” but you never really find out the connection between the two or if George is covering something up. These two friends are ranch hands that roam around trying to find a place to make a stake and start saving up their money to pay for the new life they wish to live.
The story starts off with these two friends running from angry men with dogs and guns and to me this was a surprise because the title threw me off that I might enjoy this book but I quickly learned that this is actually an interesting story. So you come to learn that George is the brains out of the two since anything they do is by his order and Lennie doesn’t do anything without asking George if it’s alright. While George is the brains Lennie is definitely the brawns because they use the image of tossing barley bags which usually takes two men to do they have Lennie doing it alone showing how crazy his strength really is.
Throughout the story Lennie has several different animals that he likes to keep with him just so he can pet them and mess with them. When they were running from the men George finds out that Lennie put a dead mouse in his pocket and brought it with them so he could pet it while they were on the run. George makes him get rid of it because he knows Lennie killed it on accident he just can’t control his strength sometimes which is shown throughout the story and explains what happened to all the other pets Lennie has had. Every time George takes his pets Lennie always said “but I just wanted to pet it George.”
So after the escape portion of the story it takes place at the new ranch they move to so they could keep working. At this new ranch a lot of different events happen that show power struggles that normal people go through every day and how ignorant and petty people really are. Some of the struggles where smart people taking advantage of the dumb, whites threatening the blacks, women using their statuses wrongly, and higher positions using this to beat on the lower ranked.
In my opinion this is a book people should consider taking the time to actually read and get to understand the symbolism like the rattling of the halter chains that is used throughout the story because they are some important life lessons that the author was trying to convey. For anyone who is just looking for a short book that will keep their attention and keep them guessing what will happen next this is a great book for them and I encourage that they also try to understand all the little symbols that the writer liked to hide throughout the story.