Exploring the American Dream in John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”

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A setter puppy nearly finished Of Mice and Men before it had a title. On May 27, 1936, John Steinbeck wrote to his editor, Elizabeth Otis, that the dog, Toby, had been left alone one night and had torn up about half the manuscript. There was no second copy, which meant roughly two months of work to redo. Steinbeck was angry, but he went easy on the animal, and his own verdict on the episode was “Minor tragedy stalked.”

The book that came out of the rewrite runs to about 30,000 words and has stayed in classrooms for close to ninety years. Two migrant ranch hands, George Milton and Lennie Small, take work on a California ranch during the Depression. They carry a plan with them: a small piece of land of their own, with rabbits for Lennie to look after. The plan drives the story. It is also the thing that does not survive it.

The Author and the Book’s Beginnings

John Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, California, and died in New York on December 20, 1968, according to the Nobel Prize organization. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 for The Grapes of Wrath, per the Pulitzer Prizes site, and in 1962 the Nobel Prize in Literature for writing that combined “sympathetic humour and keen social perception”.

Of Mice and Men arrived between those two honors. Covici Friede published it in 1937, and History.com dates its release to February 6 of that year. The Book of the Month Club had chosen it before it reached stores. Steinbeck’s first title was Something That Happened, because no one character could be fully blamed for the tragedy, and he dropped it after reading Robert Burns’s poem “To a Mouse,” which supplies the line “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley.”

The form is unusual too. The book is built as three acts of two chapters each, so it can be read as a novel or staged almost as written. “Play-novelette” is a term one critic applied to it, as the Wikipedia entry on the novella notes.

Loneliness Is the Plot

A ranch in this book is a place made of men who do not stay. Hands show up, work a season, and drift on. Early in the story George describes that life to Lennie, mostly to explain what the two of them have that other men lack.

“Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world.”

George Milton, as quoted by LitCharts

Steinbeck leans on the setting to make the point. The name of the nearby town, Soledad, is Spanish for solitude. Then there is Crooks, the stable hand who lives apart from the bunkhouse because he is Black. When Lennie wanders into his room one night, Crooks finally says out loud what the whole book has been saying quietly.

“A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got anybody.”

Crooks, in the version cited on Wikipedia

Seeing the novella as a tale of friendship only gets half of it. Nearly every character on the ranch wants something that isolation has kept out of reach: security for old Candy, acceptance for Crooks, fame for Curley’s wife, independence for George. Lennie’s want is the smallest and the clearest. He wants to tend rabbits.

A Small Version of the American Dream

Strip away the ranch and the plan is a modest piece of the American Dream: land, no boss, a living drawn from what you grow. Steinbeck sets it against 1930s migrant labor, where the men own nothing, including their own time. When Candy offers his savings, the farm briefly stops sounding like talk and starts sounding like a deal.

Burns’s line about mice and men explains what comes next. People make their plans and the plans go wrong. Readers have long taken the heron that stalks the river in the closing scene as the same idea in miniature, a thing of scenic beauty that turns out to be a predator. The dream was never going to pay out.

The Ending and What It Argues (Spoilers Ahead)

Lennie’s strength and his child’s mind combine in the ranch’s worst moment: Curley’s wife dies, and Lennie runs for the river. George reaches him first. He shoots his friend before Curley’s men can get to him.

The scene is the argument of the book. PEN America’s essay on the novella reads the ending as a case that “a mercy killing is an honorable and humane alternative to ‘justice.’” Whether or not a reader agrees, Steinbeck gives the choice no villain, which is what his first title was for. It was something that happened.

The same essay points to a stranger afterlife. The character of Lennie has been used in Texas as a rough yardstick in arguments over which defendants are intellectually disabled enough to be spared the death penalty, an episode PEN ties to the headlines over the execution of Marvin Wilson. It is a use Steinbeck could hardly have predicted.

Where the Book Takes Criticism

The first reviews were warm. Wikipedia reports that Ralph Thompson of the New York Times called it a grand little book while pointing at the melodrama of its last pages. Later readers raise a related complaint. The blog BookerTalk liked the novella but felt its sense of inevitability as a drawback, since the tragedy is plain well before it lands.

Curley’s wife draws a sharper objection. Steinbeck himself described her as a symbol rather than a person, a foil and a danger to Lennie, which is also how some readers frame the problem with her. She never gets a name of her own. The other long-running criticism targets the book’s racial language and its stereotypes, a main reason it has been challenged.

Why Schools Keep Fighting Over It

The American Library Association ranked Of Mice and Men fifth on its list of the most frequently challenged books for 2000 to 2009 and 28th for 2010 to 2019. The stated reasons, per Wikipedia, have included profanity, racial slurs, a perceived anti-business slant, and a claim that the book promotes euthanasia.

One case PEN America cites shows how small these fights can be. In 2007 a challenge in Newton, Iowa, targeted the book’s place in a high-school curriculum over its use of “Jesus Christ” as an exclamation. PEN’s essay adds that the novella has recently slid off the ALA’s most-challenged list, and it suggests the cause is less teaching and reading, not a change of heart.

On Stage, on Film, and in the Opera House

Steinbeck adapted the story himself for Broadway. George S. Kaufman directed, and the play opened at the Music Box Theatre on November 23, 1937, with Wallace Ford as George and Broderick Crawford as Lennie. It ran 207 performances and won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award for best play in 1938. Later Broadway productions include a 1974 revival with Kevin Conway and James Earl Jones and a 2014 revival starring James Franco.

Two film versions anchor the screen history. Lewis Milestone directed the 1939 film, with Burgess Meredith as George and Lon Chaney Jr. as Lennie, and it earned four Academy Award nominations. In 1992 Gary Sinise directed and played George opposite John Malkovich as Lennie, both reprising roles from the 1980 Steppenwolf Theatre Company production. Here is the 1992 trailer on YouTube, uploaded by the HD Retro Trailers channel:

The story has since reached the opera stage. Carlisle Floyd’s opera, produced by the Des Moines Metro Opera, was broadcast statewide by Iowa PBS on September 18, 2026, and streamed for a limited time afterward. It was the company’s first staging since 1985.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Of Mice and Men a novel or a novella?
A novella. At about 30,000 words it is short enough to read in a single sitting, and Steinbeck built it in three acts so it could also be staged.

Where does the title come from?
From Robert Burns’s poem “To a Mouse,” which says the best-laid plans of mice and men often go wrong. Steinbeck’s working title had been Something That Happened.

Does it have a happy ending?
No. Readers and critics have long noted a sense of inevitability about where the story is headed, which some count as its strength and others as its weakness. The details of the last scene are better left for a first read.

Why is it so often challenged in schools?
Objections have centered on profanity, racial slurs and stereotypes, and a claim that the book promotes euthanasia. The ALA ranked it fifth for 2000 to 2009 and 28th for 2010 to 2019.

Which film should I watch?
Both are worth seeing after the book. The 1939 version earned four Academy Award nominations, and the 1992 version brought the two leads over from the Steppenwolf stage production.

Where to Read It

Of Mice and Men (affiliate link). This Penguin Books paperback, listed at 107 pages in the Open Library record, is the edition linked from the buy button at the top of the page.

Further Reading

BookerTalk, a WordPress book blog, reviewed the novella in December 2013 and called it “A delightful novel even if at times it has a sense of inevitability.” Her one reservation is that the outcome can feel foretold.

PEN America’s essay argues that the book is a tragedy of exploitative labor and fragile dreams, and that the fall in its challenge rate points to fewer students reading it.

More from this shelf: Animal Farm: A Political Allegory of Totalitarianism and The Power of Knowledge: A Review of “Fahrenheit 451”.

Sources

• Of Mice and Men — Wikipedia
• Computer Crashes Before Computers: When John Steinbeck’s Dog Ate His Manuscript — The Marginalian
• John Steinbeck: Facts — NobelPrize.org
• John Steinbeck — The Pulitzer Prizes
• Of Mice and Men is published — History.com
• Of Mice and Men quotes — LitCharts
• On John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men — PEN America
• Top 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books: 2000–2009 — American Library Association
• Top 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books: 2010–2019 — American Library Association
• John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men review — BookerTalk
• Iowa PBS debuts Des Moines Metro Opera Presents Of Mice and Men — Iowa PBS
• ISBN 0140177396 record — Open Library
• Of Mice and Men (1992) Original Trailer [HD] — HD Retro Trailers, YouTube