I Need to Know About Of Mice And Men By John Stien Beck?

Answer 1

John Steinbeck was born in 1902 in Salinas, California, a region that became the setting for much of his fiction, including Of Mice and Men. As a teenager, he spent his summers working as a hired hand on neighboring ranches, where his experiences of rural California and its people impressed him deeply. In 1919, he enrolled at Stanford University, where he studied intermittently for the next six years before finally leaving without having earned a degree. For the next five years, he worked as a reporter and then as caretaker for a Lake Tahoe estate while he completed his first novel, an adventure story called Cup of Gold, published in 1929. Critical and commercial success did not come for another six years, when Tortilla Flat was published in 1935, at which point Steinbeck was finally able to support himself entirely with his writing.
In his acceptance speech for the 1962 Nobel Prize in literature, Steinbeck said:
. . . the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man’s proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

Steinbeck’s best-known works deal intimately with the plight of desperately poor California wanderers, who, despite the cruelty of their circumstances, often triumph spiritually. Always politically involved, Steinbeck followed Tortilla Flat with three novels about the plight of the California laboring class, beginning with In Dubious Battle in 1936. Of Mice and Men followed in 1937, and The Grapes of Wrath won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize and became Steinbeck’s most famous novel. Steinbeck sets Of Mice and Men against the backdrop of Depression-era America. The economic conditions of the time victimized workers like George and Lennie, whose quest for land was thwarted by cruel and powerful forces beyond their control, but whose tragedy was marked, ultimately, by steadfast compassion and love.
Critical opinions of Steinbeck’s work have always been mixed. Both stylistically and in his emphasis on manhood and male relationships, which figure heavily in Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck was strongly influenced by his contemporary, Ernest Hemingway. Even though Steinbeck was hailed as a great author in the 1930s and ’40s, and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962, many critics have faulted his works for being superficial, sentimental, and overly moralistic. Though Of Mice and Men is regarded by some as his greatest achievement, many critics argue that it suffers from one-dimensional characters and an excessively deterministic plot, which renders the lesson of the novel more important than the people in it.
Steinbeck continued writing throughout the 1940s and 1950s. He went to Europe during World War II, then worked in Hollywood both as a filmmaker and a scriptwriter for such movies as Viva Zapata! (1950). His important later works include East of Eden (1952), a sprawling family saga set in California, and Travels with Charley (1962), a journalistic account of his tour of America. He died in New York City in 1968.
The History of Migrant Farmers in California
After World War I, economic and ecological forces brought many rural poor and migrant agricultural workers from the Great Plains states, such as Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas, to California. Following World War I, a recession led to a drop in the market price of farm crops, which meant that farmers were forced to produce more goods in order to earn the same amount of money. To meet this demand for increased productivity, many farmers bought more land and invested in expensive agricultural equipment, which plunged them into debt. The stock market crash of 1929 only made matters worse. Banks were forced to foreclose on mortgages and collect debts. Unable to pay their creditors, many farmers lost their property and were forced to find other work. But doing so proved very difficult, since the nation’s unemployment rate had skyrocketed, peaking at nearly twenty-five percent in 1933.
The increase in farming activity across the Great Plains states caused the precious soil to erode. This erosion, coupled with a seven-year drought that began in 1931, turned once fertile grasslands into a desertlike region known as the Dust Bowl. Hundreds of thousands of farmers packed up their families and few belongings, and headed for California, which, for numerous reasons, seemed like a promised land. Migrant workers came to be known as Okies, for although they came from many states across the Great Plains, twenty percent of the farmers were originally from Oklahoma. Okies were often met with scorn by California farmers and natives, which only made their dislocation and poverty even more unpleasant.
John Steinbeck immortalized the plight of one such family, the Joads, in his most famous novel, The Grapes of Wrath. In several of his fiction works, including Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck illustrates how grueling, challenging, and often unrewarding the life of migrant farmers could be. Just as George and Lennie dream of a better life on their own farm, the Great Plains farmers dreamed of finding a better life in California. The state’s mild climate promised a longer growing season and, with soil favorable to a wider range of crops, it offered more opportunities to harvest. Despite these promises, though, very few found it to be the land of opportunity and plenty of which they dreamed.

THERES MORE

Of Mice and Men is a novel by John Steinbeck, first published in 1937, which tells the tragic story of George and Lennie, two displaced Anglo migrant farm workers in California during the Great Depression (1929-1939). The title of the novel is an allusion to "To a Mouse", a poem by Robert Burns.

Contents [show]
1 Overview
1.1 Events
1.2 Characters
1.3 Real-life basis
2 Notable adaptations
2.1 Cinema
2.2 Theatre
3 References from other works
4 Controversy
5 The creation of the novella
6 Other Information
7 References
8 External links



[edit] Overview
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
The story is set on a ranch a few miles from Soledad in the Salinas Valley. Lennie is a big man with the mind of a child. George is a smaller man with normal intelligence. The men are wandering ranch workers who travel together.

Of Mice and Men is based on Steinbeck's own experience as a 'bindle stiff' in the 1920s, before the arrival of the 'Okies' whom he had vividly described in The Grapes of Wrath.


[edit] Events
Lennie is a large and physically strong man with the mind of a child, and George is a smaller man with quick wit. The men are wandering ranch workers who travel together in search of any available opportunities to earn money. Lennie depends on George, as does George on Lennie for all different times in their travels. The ideal objective of most ranch workers is to amass a sizeable fortune and eventually purchase a small farm, and "live offa the fatta the lan'." Lennie is driven to reach this objective by the prospect of "tending the rabbits". However, this goal appears to be nothing more than a distant dream until Candy, another worker on the farm, offers to contribute his savings for a place on the future farm.

While subjected to the loneliness and mediocrity of the life they presently lead, George and Lennie's prospect of their own farm attracts yet another hopeful, Crooks, the African-American stable buck, and Candy, the ranch's swamper. Despite their best efforts, however, the dream begins to collapse, completely falling apart when Lennie accidentally kills the wife of Curley, who is the son of the ranch's owner, by breaking her neck after Lennie refuses to stop petting her hair. He says to himself, "I done a bad thing. I done another bad thing." The killing was foreshadowed in the beginning of the book, as in the last ranch they worked at, Lennie began to touch a woman's dress, and they were going to be lynched until George hid with Lennie, and later on escaped.

Curley's wife, who is considered by the farm workers to be a promiscuous woman with a wandering eye, tries to seek company with Lennie, and may or may not be attempting to seduce him. Though Lennie mentions he accidentally killed a puppy he was given, she fails to realize he is dangerous. Their conversation leads to Lennie stroking her hair through her prompting. However, Curley's wife gets angry when he refuses to let go. Lennie panics, tries to stop her yelling, and ends up breaking her neck. He doesn't seem to have intended it, saying I don't want to hurt you...but George'll be mad if you yell. Realizing she is dead, he adds I done a bad thing. I done another bad thing. Lennie then escapes to the river where the story had begun, the place where George advised him to hide should he ever get into trouble.

George finds Lennie ahead of the rest of the search party, having stolen Carlson's Luger pistol. He gets Lennie to look across the river and tells him once more about the dream. As Lennie looks across the river and the party comes nearer, George fights with himself to aim the gun and does what Candy couldn't do for his dog; kill his friend. Candy not being able to kill his dog and having Carlson shoot it for him foreshadows the forementioned incident. Also Carlson shoots Candy's dog with the same gun used to kill Lennie. Slim, another ranch worker, and the only other one who ever shows compassion, then takes George for a drink to settle his nerves. This may mean the dream is dead, but George is still not alone, so maybe there is hope in the book. The last line is delivered by Carlson, the ranch worker who kills Candy's old dog in a fashion similar to Lennie's killing (foreshadowing his death). He says to Curley, "Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin' them two guys?", reflecting the fact that neither Curley nor Carlson had ever learned the value of compassion. This book deals with the loneliness of not only the farmlife and the workinglife but also elements of broken dreams as represented by Lennie and George's dream but also the dreams and deception of Curley's wife.


[edit] Characters
George Milton – A small and quick, dark of face and hair, cynical ranch hand. He looks after Lennie and dreams of a better life. George's last name, Milton, is a reference to "Paradise Lost" author John Milton.
Lennie Small – Travels with George. He is a giant of a man who is unaware of his own strength. His mental deficiency manifests in an obsession to stroke 'soft' materials. There is irony in his last name, as it is "Small" while he is a very big man physically. Lennie is killed by George with a gun in order to be spared Curley's bitter revenge, Lennie having recently killed Curley's wife by accident in a barn. His mental deficiency is never specified, but is suspected to be autism.
Curley – An unpleasant curly-haired character. The boss's son. He often picks fights and detests large people; mainly Lennie. During the book he picks a fight with Lennie because he mistakenly believes that Lennie is laughing at him. Lennie initially does not defend himself and takes the beating but finally grabs and crushes Curley's hand after George tells him to defend himself.
Candy – Is the swamper. He lost a hand while working on the ranch. He owns a very old dog who was shot at the hand of Carlson. His dog is his only companion as many of the ranch workers feel he is too old to socialize with.
Candy's dog – He's a very old sheepdog who's very hard to care for because of his age. Carlson complains about him because of the way he smells, and recommended Candy to kill him. Carlson prompted him to kill the dog until Candy and Slim agreed upon this, then Carlson shot him, to put him out of his misery.
Smitty – He's a skinner who's good at fighting with his feet, just like Curley. The only time he lost a fight was while fighting Crooks during Christmas, due to the no-feet rule that applied due to Crook's "crooked" back.
Curley's wife – A young, pretty woman; sometimes called a "tart" (slut) by the men, she is often gentle toward Lennie and doesn't take advantage of him. She doesn't have a name and is the only woman mentioned on the male-oriented ranch. She often flirts with the ranch men as a cry for attention and secretly hates her husband as he sees her as his trophy. Like George and Lennie she had dreams that were eventually crushed. She is accidentally killed by Lennie.
Slim – The moral yardstick at the ranch. All the other characters respect him, as he has an omniscient and omnipotent presence. He is illustrated as a Christ-like figure. Curley suspects he is having an affair with his wife. He helps Lennie from getting fired after the fight with Curley. He is the prince of the ranch. Slim is a jerkline skinner, and can lead mules with little or no effort.
Crooks – The only black person on the ranch. He is discriminated against and has to sleep alone behind the stables. But later we see some of the discrimination wiped away as he plays horseshoes with the other ranch workers (even though he has a crooked back). Due to his isolation, he judges people before he gets to know them.
Carlson – A large and insensitive man. He shoots Candy's dog and seems to have almost no empathy. He is the typical ranch worker at the time of the book.
Whit – A young man; enthusiastic about life on the ranch, and is a regular visitor to the ranch.
The Boss – Only appears once. He is Curley's father and runs the ranch. Supposedly a nice man, but he never takes part in the day to day action in the ranch. Does not respect his son.
Aunt Clara – Lennie's previous guardian. Although she never directly appears, she plays a key role (especially after Lennie kills Curley's Wife, as a way to deal with the guilt and consequences of his actions). She is the only positive female character in the story. She appears as a vision to Lennie, who begins to talk as though he was her, showing not just signs of autism but even insanity at the end of the book.

[edit] Real-life basis
As mentioned above, the story draws on Steinbeck's own experience as a 'bindle stiff' in the 1920s. In a 1937 interview, he says:

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. (Introduction to the Penguin Classics edition

Answer 2

It's a fantastic book and well worth putting aside a couple of hours to read. I don't know a single person that hasn't cried after reading it, males included.

Answer 3

The author's name is "Steinbeck". You don't say what you need to know, so here're two links to get you started:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Mice_and_Men
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/micemen/

Answer 4

it's only 110 pages, you're a joke. check spanknotes.com

Answer 5

read the book!
his books are the best
so don't be lazy
READ THE BOOK