Of Mice and Men: A story for contemporary longings
John Steinbeck’s novel which I read for the first time aged 30, hit me like a freight-train of emotion. From the very first pages, as we are introduced to George and Lennie, it is quickly apparent that their friendship is underpinned by feelings of protection and care, punctuated by George’s longing for a different life. Instantly, I knew this was going to be a great read. By the end of the book and as the story unfolded to a predictable ending, my soul poured out of my eyes through tears.
In just a few pages, this story of two men, drawn together by socio-economic necessity and bound together by a human ideal of camaraderie like brother in arms, brilliantly transposes the reader in a moment in time. Of Mice and Men is the antithesis, the perfect complimentary novel to The Great Gatsby. Both novels are set in the first part of the 20th century, but touch upon two drastically distinct experiences of living through it. If Fitzgerald’s novel is about the trappings and excess of unfathomable wealth, Steinbeck’s depiction of rural America is concerned with the individuals who can only dream of such wealth, and so they do. George and Lennie, involuntary nomads, scour the backlands of coastal California in search of enough work to save enough money for a small plot of land. Their peculiar friendship, fraught with frustration, is held together by this dream, this…