I found a book of Steinbeck stories at a yard sale and it included it. In school the only Steinbeck we read was The Pearl. The book also has The Red Pony which I liked. What did y’all think of Mice and Men? I thought it was a good but sad book and I watched the movie (black and white one) afterwards. I didn’t see the foreshadowing until after the fact.
Comments (37)
sorted by:
All I got out of it is women will always ruin a man for her own selfishness, even the most innocent of us aren't safe from their evil.
Like, nothing bad in the book would have happened if not for a woman feeling "lonely" and wanting attention, then screaming when the obvious retard she turned to for it panicked. Including them even coming to the farm in the first place, which was a woman screaming rape at Lennie because he was touching her dress leading to them running out of town.
Same here.
The message to me was that it was possible for someone to be so stupid, he becomes a danger to himself and others.
First the rabbits, then...
That woman
I read the book and saw the Gary Sinise movie in high school almost 25 years ago.
Being disabled and having worked with mentally-disabled people, it still hurts to think about.
It's exactly the kind of person/character we built institutions for. To keep them away from the rest of society, while still maintaining something resembling human rights.
I’ve only seen the old movie with Burgess Meredith. I need to see the Sinise version. Yea that scene at the end was heartbreaking. I couldn’t imagine having to do that to a friend. How long did you work with the mentally disabled?
My high school years. I was an aide for a couple of students who had cerebral palsy and mental retardation. As in actually retarded, not the internet kind.
I lost touch after graduation, though.
John Malkovich is horribly miscast in that movie.
It was required reading for me in high school. I thought it was okay at the time, and now I only remember the broadest outline of the plot. But then any book makes for pleasant reading after you've been forced to read The Old Man and the Sea. Looking back that was probably the motivation for making us read that as our first book freshman year.
I remember reading Old Man and the Sea and wondering what the hype was about.
Had to read it in high school. We also watched the movie adaption with Gary Sinise and John Malkovich, for whatever reason. The only thing that really stuck with me was having some kind of fit during the movie. I have no idea why, but I started giggling uncontrollably when George shot Lennie. Maybe Malkovich could really pull off the extra chromosome, or maybe I just cracked after years of public education.
Oh, and I'm still not sure I didn't imagine the guy wearing one glove filled with lotion. If I did, and this doesn't make any sense, then I guess I never fully recovered from that episode.
I’ve had giggle fits before but not during that part lol
There's a great version starting Gary Sinise.
It was a sad story. I prefer East of Eden.
I have that book I think. In my massive to read pile. I’ve been meaning to check out the movie with Sinise
The other fun one I remember hearing about was that the Soviets believed the same thing, and had the play presented in Russia. It was intended to be done to show "Look at the decadent Americans, and how poorly they treat their workers that they must be in these conditions! Remember yourselves as the new Soviet Man!"
Meanwhile, the Russian citizens saw it and thought "Holy shit, they own their own truck! Lucky bastards."
See also: Romania allowing the TV show Dallas to be broadcast in the country, with similar attempts at a message and outcome among the citizens.
It's pretty interesting you'd mention that because the moment I read it in your first comment I too thought of the USSR, thinking the Soviets would've loved this.
Yea. He didn’t mean to kill that puppy or that lady. Made it sadder how he talked about the farm they were going to have
It's a decent argument for eugenics
I think the argument against eugenics has for a long time not been against the concept, but against the idea of "who makes the rules and carries it out" and realizing the government would be the one. And that being a far worse option.
Especially since the government is infested with leftists. They wouldn't go after low IQ dangers to society. They would go after high IQ threats to their social engineering schemes.
Intelligence isn't everything.
Because Georgie was just going to inadvertently cause problems?
Pretty much. It's why when retard who assaults or kills some one I think they should just be put down discretely. Dont tell them. If they're too dumb to be understand why what they did is wrong, or too emotional to stop themselves from accidentally hurting someone then they just need to be taken out. It would be far crueler to keep them locked up their whole lives. Give them an ice cream cone and a bullet to the back of the head.
This comment reminded me that it's actually more dangerous to work in a mental hospital than a prison. Mental patients are just as violent as prison inmates, if not more so. The difference is that people are mostly okay with the brutal measures necessary to control a prison population. They're far more constrained in what they can do to violent mental patients because they don't want to end up on the front page of the news for "cruelty" to the disabled.
I worked in a nursing home for a spell.
This is true about some dementia patients too--they WILL get violent. I had to wrangle one.
Wasn't it Lennie?
Yes. I got the names mixed up
I really liked how Steinbeck points out that the foolish men spend their money on sinful things like women and gambling while others avoid that and save to buy land to own "a little piece of heaven".
You see, heaven is a place on earth that can be found if you are willing to avoid the temptation of giving in to immediate earthly desires.
Never thought of it that way but a very interesting take.
Tortilla Flat is my favourite Steinbeck novel. I think the idea of presenting the misadventures of a group of drunken, lecherous paisanos as if they were the knights of the round table is a great premise. It's far more light-hearted than most of Steinbeck's work and a really fun read.
I really liked that one as well
Saw the play and read the book in middle school. They don't make stuff like this anymore. Or at least, you don't hear about any of it.
Commie propaganda by a commie propagandist.
I don't really know about Steinbeck's political leanings, but I can't say I ever noticed much overt propaganda in his work. I don't really see what the pro communism message would be in Of Mice and Men. Revolutions are always doomed to fail because the proletariat are too stupid to effectively harness their power, even acting under the orders of a vanguard?