Of Mice And Men: Poem Analysis

Of Mice and Men: Essay Topic Steinbeck’s novel takes its title from a poem by Robert Burns, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray, and leave us only grief and pain for promised joy.” This line in poem represents the significant story of George and Lennie as they go about trying to find means of a new and better way of living. In the beginning, George and Lennie have ran away from their previous lives due to Lennie’s antics that meant no harm but ended up causing it either way. George constantly belittles Lennie but in the long run he tries to build up Lennie’s spirits, along with his own, about the land they are going to own in the future. But atlas, fate has deemed it not so for George and, especially, Lennie with a few others.

As previously mentioned, George and Lennie are ran out of town due to Lennie, with what seemed innocent intentions, grabbing a lady’s dress because it felt soft. George is angry at Lennie but promises and tells him of a better life they are going to live soon (or as they say, “live of the fatta the lan’”). Lennie is excited because he’ll get to tend the rabbits he hopes to have. This continues to be motivation for George and Lennie to work at a ranch as they are trying to earn enough money for the house they want to make a down payment on, but two other characters happen to take interest in their dreams too: Candy and Crooks. Candy is an old man they first encountered when coming to the bunkhouse and crooks is an old, African-American man who Lennie encounters in the latter parts of the book in the barn where he sleeps. Candy tells George and Lennie he has money in the bank: $250 for losing his hand while on his post, $50 already in the bank, and will be paid $50 at the end of the month. This excites George and Lennie as the down payment is $600. Their hopes and dreams seem to be on its way to becoming true. But unfortunate events must take place as the poem

This leads to him not being aware of his true strength most of the time and leads to potentially avoidable situations. As previously mentioned, the dress incident was a result of his love for feeling “soft” things and the passion continues to cause disturbing incidents. He picks up a mouse along the way but crushes it accidently, yet continues to pet it. Next, he gets into a scuffle with the boss’s son Curley and crushes the bones in his hands unintentionally. Later, a man at the ranch called Slim has had a dog of his give birth to a litter of puppies, which Lennie takes delight in petting the newborn pups. Even though he is warned by George to stop petting them due to them being so young, Slim doesn’t see a problem with it. All is good until one morning Lennie accidently kills the puppy by smacking it since it was trying to bite him. The icing on the cake is the incident of Curley’s wife getting killed at the literal hands of Lennie. Curley’s wife is known to be flirtatious or even promiscuous to men around the ranch and that includes Lennie, even though she thinks he’s dumb. She explains her life story and ambitions to him but mistakenly mentions her soft hair which automatically draws Lennie’s attention. Chaos ensues when he doesn’t let go of her hair, which is tightly in his grasp at this point, and she proceeds to become frantic making him angry. He tries to quiet her screams by covering her mouth