Of Mice and Men

    Conflict is one of those things required to make a book readable; no one wants to read about characters for whom everything always goes perfectly. There will always be a central conflict, though it may be difficult to determine, as in John Steinbeck’s novella Of Mice and Men. This book outlines the story of two migrant workers by the names of George and Lennie. One of the main issues we see, although there are many, is that Lennie has a child’s mind despite his considerable size. He seems not to know his own strength, which results in the accidental killing of creatures such as mice. This, along with the conflicts detailed below, contributes to the novella’s central conflict, the constant battle between the two migrant workers and society.
    Our first demonstration of this conflict is very near the beginning, when George and Lennie are discussing their future. They are, at the time, on their way to another in what appears to be a series of ranches, where they intend to work. George decides that they will stop for the night because they still have some distance to go--the fault, apparently, of a dishonest bus driver--and after a certain point Lennie brings up their plans for the money they will earn. From what George says, the reader understands that they intend to raise enough money to buy their own small farm so that they will no longer have to work for someone else. His explanation begins with a description of others who live the way he and Lennie do:

“‘Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don’t belong no place. They come to a ranch an’ work up a stake and then they go inta town and blow their stake, and the first thing you know they’re poundin’ their tail on some other ranch. They ain’t got nothing to look ahead to.’” (13)

George continues from this with an explanation of why he and Lennie are not like them and how they will eventually have the aforementioned small farm. The message is clear: society both demands and expects that they will give up on this dream of theirs, just like everybody else who works as they do. Their intention is to break this apparently long-standing mold and actually manage to achieve the future they want. This may not appear to be an actual conflict, because it is simply George stating what he believes to be true, but in fact it is more than that: it is an internal struggle against people’s expectations. The same conflict is displayed much later on as well, when Lennie presents their dream to the stable buck, Crooks, who doesn’t believe that they will ever actually manage it any more than anyone else has:

“‘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...They’re all the time talkin’ about it, but it’s jus’ in their head.” (74)

This brings up the interesting question of the reason none of them ever attain their desire. Perhaps it is that society forces them to. It is assumed that they will fail, and no matter how hard they try, they cannot help but live up to this depressing expectation--which goes on to reinforce the idea that none of them will ever succeed. George and Lennie, however, actually manage to convince some of the naysayers through the strength of their conviction that they will be different--although this doesn’t last forever.
   At the beginning of the novel, it is mentioned that something happened in the town of Weed which caused George and Lennie to lose their jobs; this seems to have been caused by Lennie, although it is not originally mentioned how. After what seems to be about a day working on the new ranch, George elaborates on this occurrence to Slim, whose position is identified as “jerkline skinner” and who wants to know more:

“‘He seen this girl in a red dress. Dumb bastard like he is, he wants to touch ever’thing he likes. Just wants to feel it. So he reaches out to feel this red dress an’ the girl lets out a squawk, and that gets Lennie all mixed up, and he holds on ‘cause that’s the only thing he can think to do. Well, this girl squawks and squawks...That girl rabbits an’ tell the law she been raped. The guys in Weed start a party out to lynch Lennie.’” (41-42)

This time it is Lennie who is up against society; the majority of people do not understand the way his mind works. He, with his inability to understand the implications of his action, attempts to touch the girl’s red dress just because he likes it, without any sinister motive. The girl assumes that he, probably like many other men, is making unsolicited and unwanted advances, and reacts as if this expectation is a concrete fact. The men of Weed take this girl at her word, because it is likely that they know her and don’t know Lennie, and certainly don’t understand Lennie or his mental difficulties. Based on this disconnect, they decide to take their revenge and lynch Lennie. It is clear that they do not succeed in this attempt, because Lennie is very much alive when the story takes place, but the fact that he might have been lynched serves as another example of the ways that society is fighting him, and George by association.
   Now we come to the end, the final manifestation of their struggle. The trouble begins when the rather...dishonest wife of Curley (the boss’s son) goes into the barn to talk to Lennie. He begins to talk about how he likes “to pet nice things with [his] fingers”, and Curley’s nameless wife responds by offering her hair as something for him to pet. After a few moments she tells him to stop, which confuses him--much like the events in Weed--and causes him to hold on. She screams, he tries to stop her and ends up accidentally killing her. When she is discovered, both George and Slim understand that Lennie didn’t do it on purpose, but Curley flies into a rage and will not listen to reason. Another worker on the ranch, Carlson, is in agreement with Curley, and finding that Lennie has taken his gun, is even more livid. The two of them, accompanied by Slim and George, set out to hunt Lennie down and make him pay for his mistake. George, however, splits from the rest of the group and goes to where he knows Lennie will be. He talks to Lennie about the dream that he now knows will never be, and then he shoots Lennie in the back of the head to prevent him from suffering. He does this because he knows that Curley would make Lennie suffer if he were allowed to catch up with him. This is demonstrated by an earlier statement of Curley’s:

“‘That big son-of-a-bitch done it. I know he done it...I’m gonna get him. I’m going for my shotgun. I’ll kill the big son-of-a-bitch myself. I’ll shoot ‘im in the guts.” (96)

To Curley, it doesn’t matter that Lennie doesn’t know his own strength, or that killing Curley’s wife was an accident. He refuses to believe that it could have been an accident because he already dislikes Lennie for other reasons, and because he cannot accept that others think differently than he does. In a way, Curley might be representative of society; he does everything within his power to control his wife, he antagonizes Lennie because Lennie is different from him, and he doesn’t bother to think about whether Lennie’s actions might have been accidental before deciding that he deserves to suffer. It follows, then, that the boss’s son is the embodiment of all George and Lennie were trying to fight.
   As demonstrated above, George and Lennie are engaged in a continuous conflict with the pressures of society, which control their lives up to and including the time of Lennie’s death. This could be said to mirror our lives today, even though we have long since escaped the Great Depression; more so now than ever, society demands that we conform to a certain mold, and as in Of Mice and Men, anyone not following expectations will find themselves ostracized. George and Lennie’s doomed attempt to attain their dream is an example of an attempt to break the mold, and it raises the worrying question: are all such attempts destined to fail?