This is a tragic 1937 novella by John Steinbeck (John Steinbeck – Biographical – NobelPrize.org) that tells the story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant workers searching for job opportunities in California during the Great Depression.
George is sharp and protective, while Lennie is a physically massive man with an intellectual disability. Despite their bleak circumstances, they share the American Dream, which is to save enough money to buy a small piece of land where they can live peacefully and where Lennie can ‘tend the rabbits’. They are joined in this dream by Candy, an aging, one-handed handyman who offers his life savings to help buy the farm.
The dream is shattered by Lennie’s tragic flaw. He loves to pet soft things but does not know his own physical strength. After accidentally killing a puppy given to him on the ranch, Lennie is cornered in a barn by a lonely woman. When she allows him to stroke her hair, he panics as she starts to scream, accidentally breaking her neck.
Lennie flees to a hiding spot by the Salinas River. To save his gentle friend from a brutal, agonizing lynching by an angry mob led by the ranch owner’s son, George tracks Lennie down first. He comforts Lennie by retelling their dream of the farm one last time, and shoots him swiftly in the back of the head as an act of mercy.
Written with a tight, play-like structure, this work strips away the idealized myth of the American Dream to expose the harsh economic and emotional realities faced by marginalized people during the Great Depression.
The novella has been widely praised for its emotional economy, immense tragic momentum, and vivid imagery. Steinbeck elicits empathy for the downtrodden without resorting to sentimentality.
128 pages in Penguin Modern Classics
First published 1937
ISBN-13 : 978-0141023571
John Steinbeck