Lennie sits in the barn stroking his little dead puppy. Suddenly, Curly’s wife enters the barn; (Curly is son of the ranch-owner). Lennie knows that he isn’t allowed to talk to Curley’s wife by George. George knows that Curly gets mad if someone speaks to his wife, so he had forbid Lennie to speak to her. She tries to get a conversation and success, they’re starting to speak about the dead dog.
Curley’s wife moves very close to Lennie and invents him to start stroking her hair. In the first moment he refuse, but after her begging he starts; (Lennie has always liked stroking smooth things). A after a while, she wants him to stop stroking her hair. Lennie gets afraid, and shakes her head. She’s trying to get free meanwhile her hold her stronger and stronger. He tries to get her to the ground, but broke her neck instead. She dies immediately, Lennie gets afraid and escapes from the barn, away from the ranch into the bush.
Candy, a old worker, enters the barn and understand that Lennie had done it. He inform George about it. All the other workers, start to search for Lennie.
He has run to place, where we meet him and George in the beginning of the book. It is beside a pool in the forest. George told Lennie that they should met there if something failed. George finds Lennie sitting on bank, crying. George doesn’t know what to do but he decides to execute Lennie, otherwise Curly will do it when he finds him. George executes Lennie with a shoot in his neck.
Characters
George is a normal human being, calm and nice with a good behavior. He knows how to act in different situations. He is a normal-looking guy, about 35 years old, short hair and a well-looking body. Lennie on the other hand behaves like a kid. He is mentally retarded but tries to avoid fights with people. Lennie is a very kind person, who tries to satisfy George, even if he fails many times.
A long time ago, Lennie misbehave to his aunt Clara, which forced him to escape. George helped him and after that he had take care of Lennie. Often George thinks how it should be without Lennie, not having all this trouble.
Another man on the ranch is Slim. He is the supervisor of the workers when the work on the fields. He is a very nice gent, who accept Lennie for who he is. Lennie is very strong and that makes Slim happy. Lennie carries as much as two men. In the first days, Curley wants to know if the two guys are good workers, Slim protects them and says they’re brilliant, although there had been small problems with Lennie.
Events
# 1
In the beginning of the book, the two main characters sit beside the pool in the forest. They eat white beans (without ketchup!) and talking about the future. George tells Lennie that if something bad happens in the future, which makes him forced to escape, he shall return to this place and wait for George. That speech gave me a feeling that something bad would happen. And as we know, in the end of the book, Lennie become executed by George at that place.
# 2
In the middle of the story there is a event which I found very touching. It is about the execution of Candy’s dog. The animal is very old, I think it’s blind also, and it has a lot of pains like Candy has. Candy doesn’t want to destroy his dog, but when Slim tells him he has to, Candy realise that he has to kill his dog. He can’t do it by himself, another man (I can’t remember his name), says he can do it. Candy lies in his bed, quite depressed, waiting for the shoot-bang. Although he knows that this is the best thing to do, he blame himself for killing his best friend. I was very touched by this event, Steinbeck gave me a special atmosphere I can’t explain.
Themes
I think that Steinbeck would show the difficulties of being mentally retarded in the society in the 1930’s. There weren’t any society help programmes which took care of “special” people. Nowadays in Sweden, you get help from the society, but in the 1930’s in USA you didn’t survive if you hadn’t kind people around you. Probably Steinbeck wanted to point out the importance of having a security help system for the most poor people in the society.
The end
The book’s end was weird to me. I thought that George and Lennie should escape to a new work, which they did the from aunt Clara. I was surprised when Lennie got killed. Maybe Steinbeck would show us that George didn’t manage to take care of Lennie any more. A difference between the book and film is that in book George never hesitated to kill Lennie in the movie. In the book it was very hard for George to shoot Lennie.
My opinion
My conclusion was that it is a very good book, well written. It is obvious that it’s written by a professional writer. He makes an special atmosphere, it feels like you’re in the story by yourself. A good thing is that the book is very exciting. You don’t what will happen in the next chapter. The book is well worth reading. If you don’t have read it – you should…
Language
There is a widely difference between the dialogues and narrative parts of the text. In the first one, there are much slang and shorted words. In narrative parts, there is more formal English and I think that is easier to understand.
