The novel contains scenes of economic, sexual and racial exploitation and oppression. The novel ends in a controversial scene that both shows George and Lennie’s powerlessness and George’s sad act of love and rebellion. George and Lennie’s plans die after a series of violent acts. Steinbeck took the title of the book from Robert Burns poem “To a Mouse” and its famous lines about failed dreams: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley.” (The best laid schemes of mice and men / Often go awry.) “Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world,” George says. Loneliness and rootlessness are powerful themes in the book. George has a dream, the “American Dream,” of settling down on a small plot of land and farming it with Lennie. The story is about two migrant ranch hands, George and his friend Lennie who is physically powerful but mentally challenged.

And Burgess Meridith in the leads and most recently with Gary Sinese and John Malkovich. Steinbeck adapted it for the stage later in 1937. The book is set out like a Greek play, in three acts of two chapters each. The Nobel Prize committee singled it out as a “tiny masterpiece” when Steinbeck won the prize in 1962. It was one of Steinbeck’s “California novels” about migrants to California and preceded The Grapes of Wrath by two years. John Steinbeck’s dramatic novella Of Mice and Men was published on February 6, 1937.

Of mice and men 1937