Another old classic that I had not read is coming up for discussion at our book club. This very short novel is set in deep depression era central California. The false promise of good jobs in agriculture there sets the stage for Steinbeck’s later classic The Grapes of Wrath, that I have read. There are no dates but it is obviously in the depths of the Great Depression. George and his mentally challenged constant companion, Lennie, whom he cares for, seek serial menial labor jobs harvesting crops. George, Lennie and a loner named Candy, also an itinerant day labourer meet in the bunkhouse at one of the camps, and dream of buying their own ranch to raise rabbits for Lennie to pet, chickens, and a cow or pig or two. Lennie is mentally probably an imbecile in what we were taught in psychiatry as the spectrum of mental deficiencies from idiot to imbecile to moron, based on measured IQ. (This is now a discredited classification that I still think of as useful shorthand.) He is huge and strong, capable of hard manual labour, but obsessed with petting anything soft, like a mouse. But he does not know his own strength and kills his pets by stroking them and caressing them, including the mice in the title, which obviously derives from Robbie Burns poem “To A Mouse.” I will not divulge his ultimate fate that this obsession leads to.
A graphic depiction of the poverty and chaos of the Great Depression with the colourful illiterate itinerants and their clipped lingo, this is a beautifully written tragedy and a joy to read.
Thanks, Din.
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The Passionate Reader 