Slim looked through George and beyond him. “Ain’t many guys travel around together,” he mused. “I don’t know why. Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”
Of Mice and Men is a story about George and Lenny, two guys struggling to make ends meet during the Great Depression in the 1930’s. George was bright, Lenny wasn’t. George dreamt of being his own boss. He wanted his own farm and not have to toil incessantly every day for a meager wage. Lenny was obsessed with petting things, whether they were mice, puppies, rabbits, or velvet. He trusted George, and was even subordinate to him. George, in turn, preferred to be with Lenny than to be alone, despite constantly reiterating how much easier things would be for him if he was alone – but we get hints that this isn’t necessarily the case.
There’s an argument being made in the book, and it’s about intelligence and loneliness, and how often the two seem to coincide. Indeed, George could go his own way and avoid a lot of trouble, but he didn’t want to. At least Lenny gave him company. Lenny was loyal and did what he was told. He respected George, who wasn’t someone who easily commanded respect from others.
“He’s a nice fella,” said Slim. “Guy don’t need no sense to be a nice fella. Seems to me sometimes it jus’ works the other way around. Take a real smart guy and he ain’t hardly ever a nice fella.”
Lenny had a child-like heart, but had a large body, and big, strong hands. He wasn’t aware of his own strength, and it was the combination of his innocence, undeveloped emotional mind and his obviousness to his own physical power that created a sense of impending doom throughout the novel.
George would comfort Lenny with a vision of the future that involved the two of them. They, unlike the other ranchers at least had each other’s backs, and Lenny loved hearing that repeated to him. You get the sense that Lenny, despite his many flaws, had a deep appreciation of friendship. That, despite not being intelligent, was more humane and honest than most. George and Lenny had each other’s back, no matter what. But the story Steinbeck tells us was not a happy one. It touched on compassion and brotherhood, but it also portrayed a dark picture of the wretchedness of the human condition, the cruelty of arbitrary circumstances, and the tragedy of unrealized dreams.
When asked why he traveled with a crazy person like Lenny, George replied angrily:
“He ain’t no cuckoo. He’s dumb as hell, but he ain’t crazy. An’ I ain’t so bright neither, or I wouldn’t be buckin’ barley for my fifty and found. If I was bright, if I was even a little bit smart, I’d have my own little place, an’ I’d be bringin’ in my own crops, ’stead of doin’ all the work and not getting what comes up outta the ground.”
Crooks, a black man who was treated like a slave lived alone in a room, where he kept to himself and read books. But one time, he finally received a visitor, it was Lenny, and after a brief discussion about Lenny’s relationship with George, Crooks said:
“Maybe you can see now. You got George. You know he’s goin’ to come back. S’pose you didn’t have nobody. S’pose you couldn’t go into the bunkhouse and play rummy ’cause you was black. How’d you like that? S’pose you had to sit out here an’ read books. Sure you could play horseshoes till it got dark, but then you got to read books. Books ain’t no good. A guy needs somebody—to be near him.” He whined, “A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody. Don’t make no difference who the guy is, long’s he’s with you. I tell ya,” he cried, “I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an’ he gets sick.”
Lenny didn’t process the thought of losing George hypothetically. He was unable to think about things abstractly in that way. George was his best friend, and any thought about him being gone was not up for discussion. Cooks then explains his point a little differently.
“I didn’t mean to scare you. He’ll come back. I was talkin’ about myself. A guy sets alone out here at night, maybe readin’ books or thinkin’ or stuff like that. Sometimes he gets thinkin’, an’ he got nothing to tell him what’s so an’ what ain’t so. Maybe if he sees somethin’, he don’t know whether it’s right or not. He can’t turn to some other guy and ast him if he sees it too. He can’t tell. He got nothing to measure by. I seen things out here. I wasn’t drunk. I don’t know if I was asleep. If some guy was with me, he could tell me I was asleep, an’ then it would be all right. But I jus’ don’t know.” Crooks was looking across the room now, looking toward the window.
Lenny later uncovers the big plan he had with George and Candy. They planned on buying their own ranch and working whenever they wanted to – being free men. Candy was old and afraid of being discarded with when he ceased to be as efficient as he once was and was eager to join the two friends in their plan.
But Crooks had heard this story before, it was timeless and tiresome.
“You’re nuts.” Crooks was scornful. “I seen hunderds of men come by on the road an’ on the ranches, with their bindles on their back an’ that same damn thing in their heads. Hunderds of them. They come, an’ they quit an’ go on; an’ every damn one of ’em’s got a little piece of land in his head. An’ never a God damn one of ’em ever gets it. Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head. They’re all the time talkin’ about it, but it’s jus’ in their head.”
Crooks interrupted brutally. “You guys is just kid-din’ yourself. You’ll talk about it a hell of a lot, but you won’t get no land. You’ll be a swamper here till they take you out in a box. Hell, I seen too many guys. Lennie here’ll quit an’ be on the road in two, three weeks. Seems like ever’ guy got land in his head.”
Candy rubbed his cheek angrily. “You God damn right we’re gonna do it. George says we are. We got the money right now.”
Yeah?” said Crooks. “An’ where’s George now? In town in a whore house. That’s where your money’s goin’. Jesus, I seen it happen too many times. I seen too many guys with land in their head. They never get none under their hand.”
Candy cried, “Sure they all want it. Everybody wants a little bit of land, not much. Jus’ somethin’ that was his. Somethin’ he could live on and there couldn’t nobody throw him off of it. I never had none. I planted crops for damn near ever’body in this state, but they wasn’t my crops, and when I harvested ’em, it wasn’t none of my harvest. But we gonna do it now, and don’t make no mistake about that. George ain’t got the money in town. That money’s in the bank. Me an’ Lennie an’ George. We gonna have a room to ourself. We’re gonna have a dog an’ rabbits an’ chickens. We’re gonna have green corn an’ maybe a cow or a goat.” He stopped, overwhelmed with his picture.
Crooks asked, “You say you got the money?”
“Damn right. We got most of it. Just a little bit more to get. Have it all in one month. George got the land all picked out, too.”
Crooks reached around and explored his spine with his hand. “I never seen a guy really do it,” he said. “I seen guys nearly crazy with loneliness for land, but ever’ time a whore house or a blackjack game took what it takes.” He hesitated. “. . . If you . . . guys would want a hand to work for nothing—just his keep, why I’d come an’ lend a hand. I ain’t so crippled I can’t work like a son-of-a-bitch if I want to.”
Even though Crooks had seen it a hundred times, the idea remained tempting. And like the countless artists and entrepreneurs who dream of a brighter future, there is a realization among most – if not all of them – that such a future is unlikely, if not impossible. But is there a better alternative? Dreams give people hope, as unlikely as they are, and as difficult one’s circumstances could be. In “Man’s Search for Meaning”, Frankl was able to survive the most brutal circumstances because he had to write his book, and his friend survived because of the idea of seeing his wife again. Of Mice and Men ends tragically. George had to shoot his best friend, but at least he got to do it himself, and didn’t let any strangers do it. At least Lenny died while listening to words that comforted him about a vision of the future, where he got to do his favorite things, rather than an angry mob who neither knew nor cared about him.