Of Mice and Men. By John Steinbeck.

Of Mice and Men. By John Steinbeck.

Synopsis

A novella about two friends trying to make it in the world.

Key Takeaways

 “A guy needs somebody―to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody. Don’t make no difference who the guy is, long’s he’s with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an’ he gets sick.”

We are social creatures, sometimes it seems harder to work with someone but its always easier in the long run to have a partner, a partner in life and a partner in crime. This applies especially when travelling and working.

“Trouble with mice is you always kill ’em.”

If you don’t know your own strength you will kill the vulnerable and fragile things around you.

“Ain’t many guys travel around together,” he mused. “I don’t know why. Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other” 

The last part of this quote rings true with me. Are we all scared of each other? Is that why we don’t connect or share? Is that why we lie? Pretend? Put on fake smiles? Don’t be scared. Open up and you’ll be surprised how well you connect.

“I ain’t got no people. I seen the guys that go around on the ranches alone. That ain’t no good. They don’t have no fun. After a long time they get mean.”

Similar to the above, if we spend so much time alone, how can we have fun? And if we don’t have fun, what happens, we get mean.

“I see hundreds of men come by on the road an’ on the ranches with their bindles on their back an’ that same damn thing in their heads. Hundreds of them. They come, an’ they quit an’ go on; an’ every damn one of ‘em’s got a little piece of land in his head. An’ never a God damn one of ‘em ever gets it. Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out there. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody never gets no land. It’s just in their head.”

Are you making the required sacrifices to make your dreams come true?

Thoughts

Another thing which I could not find the perfect quote for was how we cant save people. George does his best to save Lennie but can’t. That speaks to me, we can’t save people, no matter how much we love them. We can only save ourselves or at least hope to.  A good novella about life and human nature. The frog and the scorpion. Its good. 8/10.