# Mice or Men?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** books-writing-myths
**Created:** [December 1, 2023, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975 "2023-12-01T19:49:58Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Jinx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jinx)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2023, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975/1 "2023-12-01T19:49:58Z")
Now that I think of it…now that I’m too old to care, but let me ask: What’s Steinbeck’s point in writing “Of Mice and Men”?
No, this is not a homework assignment. Just a cynical old fart asking now that I think about things we value in this world.
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### Author:  [@saucywench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saucywench)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2023, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975/2 "2023-12-01T20:02:16Z")
It’s all here…
> **[Of Mice and Men](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Mice_and_Men#)**
>
> Of Mice and Men is a novella written by John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it narrates the experiences of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers, who move from place to place in California in search of new job opportunities during the Great Depression in the United States.
> Steinbeck based the novella on his own experiences working alongside migrant farm workers as a teenager in the 1910s, before the arrival of the Okies that he would describe in his novel The Grape...
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### Author:  [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2023, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975/3 "2023-12-01T20:02:25Z")
What’s anybody’s point in writing anything? He came up with an idea, thought he could sell it for money, was right.
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### Author:  [@saucywench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saucywench)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2023, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975/4 "2023-12-01T20:04:40Z")
No Darren. It wasn’t just an idea. Steinbeck lived it.
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### Author:  [@saucywench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saucywench)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2023, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975/5 "2023-12-01T20:06:08Z")
Steinbeck told _The New York Times_ in 1937:[[5]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Mice_and_Men#cite_note-nyt-parini-5)
> I was a bindlestiff myself for quite a spell. I worked in the same country that the story is laid in. The characters are composites to a certain extent. Lennie was a real person. He’s in an insane asylum in California right now. I worked alongside him for many weeks. He didn’t kill a girl. He killed a ranch foreman. Got sore because the boss had fired his pal and stuck a pitchfork right through his stomach. I hate to tell you how many times. I saw him do it. We couldn’t stop him until it was too late.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2023, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975/6 "2023-12-01T20:11:59Z")
The title is from Robert Burns’ _To A Mouse_:
_But Mouse, you are not alone,_
_In proving foresight may be vain:_
_ **The best-laid schemes of mice and men** _
_ **Go oft awry,** _
_And leave us nothing but grief and pain,_
_For promised joy!_
George and Lennie are struggling to survive during the Depression. They hope and plan to one day have a farm where they could raise rabbits for Lennie to pet. But it’s not to be. _Now you are turned out, for all your trouble, / Without house or holding._ They planned and tried to find a way to fulfil their dream, but their plans went awry.
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### Author:  [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2023, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975/7 "2023-12-01T20:13:59Z")
What’s Steinbeck’s point? It’s right in the title. We all need to be reminded from time to time of what Robbie Burns originally wrote:
> The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
> Gang aft agley,
> An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
> For promis’d joy!
Might as well ask, “what’s the deal with ‘War and Peace’? What’s that got to do with the human condition, anyway?”
ETA: Ninja’d by @Johnny_L.A I see, but being part Scottish, I prefer it in the original dialect 😉
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### Author:  [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2023, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975/8 "2023-12-01T20:43:15Z")
It’s one of my favorite books. When I win the big one, I’m going to film it verbatim- no added dialog or scenes.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2023, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975/9 "2023-12-01T21:57:59Z")
> [@solost](#):
>
> but being part Scottish, I prefer it in the original dialect 😉
Me too. I just copied it from the wrong side of the table.
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### Author:  [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)
#### Post date: [December 1, 2023, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975/10 "2023-12-01T23:01:24Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#):
>
> It’s one of my favorite books. When I win the big one, I’m going to film it verbatim- no added dialog or scenes.
Well, I will try to go see it when it is made but you have reminded me how much I enjoyed the 1939 version with Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr. I will add it to my list of movies to watch again before I die. Ones that I really enjoyed but have only seen once.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2023, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975/11 "2023-12-02T01:03:15Z")
I think his point is that life sucks and then we die.
Actually, that’s the point of most of Steinbeck’s writing.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2023, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975/12 "2023-12-02T02:54:40Z")
> [@don\_t\_ask](#):
>
> I will add it to my list of movies to watch again before I die.
This is why we love TCM. They’re always showing movies we love.
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### Author:  [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2023, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975/13 "2023-12-02T02:58:25Z")
Steinbeck wrote it so that Bob Weir could borrow the plot and write _Jack Straw_.
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### Author:  [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2023, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975/14 "2023-12-02T05:37:17Z")
> [@don\_t\_ask](#):
>
> . . .you have reminded me how much I enjoyed the 1939 version with Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr. . .
The 1992 version with Gary Sinise and John Malkovich is also really good. It’s a film that deserves more attention.
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### Author:  [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2023, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975/15 "2023-12-02T14:25:06Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> I think his point is that life sucks and then we die.
>
> Actually, that’s the point of most of Steinbeck’s writing.
More like, “life sucks and then we _ **live** _”.
I first got into Steinbeck when I was assigned to read ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ in a high school AP English class. I dreaded cracking the book open at first, but I loved it. After that I devoured everything, or at least close to it, that he ever wrote. He had this knack for describing sweeping vistas of life and nature in cinematic detail. I’ve always been a very visual reader, meaning I often conjure clear mental images of what I read, so his writing style was perfect for my reading style.
To the OP, I feel like asking “what’s the point of Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’” may as well be asking ‘what’s the point of all fiction?’ I mean, the latter is a viewpoint that some people do share, but one that I heartliy disagree with.
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### Author:  [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2023, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975/16 "2023-12-02T18:09:45Z")
In the early 1960s Steinbeck was in his ascendancy when postwar America was also in its. Even though he’d slammed bankers and fat-ass cops in The Grapes of Wrath, he and his books were still feted by the New Frontier types as an example what was great about our Great Society. This was when the rival USSR was promoting garbage like _And Quiet Flows the Don,_ suppressing _Dr Zhivago_ and Khrushchev was blowing his stack at an exhibition of abstract art. In the US, hobby-painter Eisenhower admitted he didn’t understand abstract art but clearly saw that it was what a free society created. Steinbeck went on a road trip with his dog to see what the US was still like, and LBJ tried to get him to be a cheerleader for Vietnam as well as his domestic programs. To his credit he demurred.
For a while after his death, he was the known as the author of “high school classics.” That was the environment where I read much of his books. In the 1970’s the sex in his books was not unacceptable for American adolescents, and his themes thought beneficial compared to his contemporaries: chest-thumping Hemingway, cynical John O’Hara. Novels by Southern Gothics and Jewish masturbators would have to wait for college.
But Steinbeck is unacceptable today. Brothels, brothels run by a woman known as “The N-word,” Native Americans dismissed as lazy grubbers on the very first page of _East of Eden,_ Bums and whores in _Cannery Row_, Mexican itinerants in _Tortilla Flat._
What _Mice and Men_ has, as well as Steinbeck’s other works have, appreciated by 1970s liberal educators, was the application to American characters and situations of a theme developed earlier by Leo Tolstoy: Man is made for happiness, and because of the tragedies that lie in his path, he needs to maintain a belief in happiness no matter what.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2023, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975/17 "2023-12-02T19:04:28Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#):
>
> Steinbeck went on a road trip with his dog to see what the US was still like…
🎶 _Have you ever been down Salinas way_
_Where Steinbeck found the valley?_
_And he wrote about it the way it was_
_In his travelings with Charley_🎶
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### Author:  [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2023, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975/18 "2023-12-02T19:20:33Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#):
>
> But Steinbeck is unacceptable today. Brothels, brothels run by a woman known as “The N-word,” Native Americans dismissed as lazy grubbers on the very first page of _East of Eden,_ Bums and whores in _Cannery Row_, Mexican itinerants in _Tortilla Flat._
This is an interesting take. In my post immediately preceding yours, in which I wrote a short appreciation of Steinbeck, I did almost mention that I haven’t read him in years and I wonder if I reread his novels today, how well they would have have aged from when I read them in my late teens and early 20s.
Not having read his novels in years, I can’t say whether your condemnation of Steinbeck is completely warranted or not, but it seems a little harsh. Steinbeck was a champion of the downtrodden, and I haven’t heard anything about him having racist leanings, though I don’t really keep up on the latest opinions of classic authors. Brothels, prostitutes and bums are things that exist, and people were called the n-word back then. Just because an author uses the term does not mean they endorse it. I’ll have to reread Cannery Row, Tortilla Flat and (at least the first page of) East of Eden and see how they hold up to me now.
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### Author:  [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2023, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975/19 "2023-12-02T20:01:16Z")
Where do I condemn him? I just pointed out the reception he’s getting today, which I personally don’t care about one bit. Google “Steinbeck racist” and all the hit pieces jump right up.
Which… sucks. I know “woke” is a RW snarl word, but in fact there is a culture of sanctimonious nit-picking, where writers who describe the world as it is are attacked by those who will only accept the word as it should be.
Especially sad in Steinbeck’s case, since he said this at his Nobel acceptance speech:
“I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man, has no dedication nor any membership in literature.”
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### Author:  [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2023, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mice-or-men/993975/20 "2023-12-02T21:38:35Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#):
>
> Where do I condemn him? I just pointed out the reception he’s getting today, which I personally don’t care about one bit.
Ok, I initially thought your post was favorable to Steinbeck until it seemed like you took a left turn with “But Steinbeck is unacceptable today”, and proceeded to give examples why. On first scan I thought you were expressing your own opinion, but I get the irony now on a second read.
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