Of Mice and Men Summary | Chapterly

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck: A Complete Summary "A guy needs somebody -- to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody." Overview Of Mice and Men (1937) is John Steinbeck's compact, devastating novella about two itinerant ranch workers during the Great Depression. George Milton is small, sharp, and protective. Lennie Small is enormous, gentle, intellectually disabled, and possesses a dangerous strength he cannot control. Together, they share a dream: to own a small farm where they can "live off the fatta the lan'" and where Lennie can tend rabbits. The title comes from Robert Burns's poem "To a Mouse": "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley" -- the best-laid plans often go wrong. Steinbeck's novella is about how circumstance, social structures, and human nature conspire to crush the most humble of dreams. It is also about the fierce, complicated love between two men who have nothing in the world except each other. The book was written to be performed as a stage play, and its tight structure -- each chapter set in a single location, rising toward an inevitable climax -- gives it the force of tragedy. Themes...