OF MICE AND MEN
★★★★★ (3 out of 5)
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing Of Mice and Men.
Literally the only thing I remember about John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is the scene where Lenny inadvertently takes the life of a mouse. Or maybe it was a kitten or bunny. I guess I don’t even remember that so well.
Anyway, it’s one of the best manslaughter scenes I’ve ever read. What I like most is the abject tragedy of it all because Lenny loved whatever it was that he killed so much that he hugged it to death. It was like Lenny couldn’t contain his love. He had so much love that something had to die. I once dated a woman of similar circumstance. We broke up when she was convicted.
I recently mentioned the vast supply of love that Newt Gingrich has – the love that makes him have to marry so many women. My love is not as vast as his, though it has always been very strong. I like to imagine that my love could resurrect my wife but so far I guess my love isn’t strong enough. Lenny’s love wasn’t strong enough either because I think he ended up getting sentenced to the electric chair or something. Maybe he was just run out of town. I don’t know. I read that book a long time ago.
In the movie version of the book, Lenny or the other guy was played by John Malkovich.
The point that book was making was that love can really ruin things so maybe we should all try not loving anything and then we’ll never get hurt. It seems like a pretty safe course of action to me. If I had read Of Mice and Men before I married my wife I could have tried not loving her. I don’t know, though, she was really hard not to love.
Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing pizza.
3 responses
Lenny killed a mouse, later somebody’s wife. My favorite part was when he would go to his friend, and say “I done a bad thing, George.” I think George shoots him in the end. Lenny was just a big lug who didn’t know his own strength. I think the book starts out with a cowboy blowing his nose straight out into the air, to fall on the ground. The fact that I was more impressed by this than mouse or woman killing may be due to my young age at the time (I think I was 9 or 10.)
Ted this reads as a confession of first degree murder of your wife. Really dumb to do before getting elected president.
Steinbeck had an affection for characters who could reveal the truth about humanity (In Dubious Battle, Cannery Row). It takes rational intelligence not to kill (overwhelm) the one you love. It takes social intelligence not to love so much that the community will kill you (Jesus, Socrates). It takes real love to perserve/kill the one who loves without reason from being harmed/killed by those who espouse love (George, God.) Makes you wonder why we teach this book so frequently in high school. Maybe because it is short.
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