This book stands out for me as one of the best novella’s of all time. The story is simple and easy to read yet it touches on topics so deep and so meaningful. It is about humanity and the struggle for survival , among working class drifting folk who are alone and living difficult nomadic lives working as labourers on farms in California. Most of the characters are disabled or deformed in some way and represent the unwanted and unloved, the cast outs of society.
There are no mothers or loving family members to give support to these men thrown together in a bid to earn money to survive. It is desperately tragic and it encapsulates the idea that the life of man is indeed, ’nasty brutish and short’, " and yet these men come together and form a unit akin to a family, and there is a level of care between them. There are two important relationships.
The first being the relationship between two labourers George and the child - like though physically powerful Lennie whom he takes care of, and Curley the pugnacious son of the landowner and his dissatisfied wayward wife. Curley’s wife is that biblical Jezebel thrown in to cause chaos among these men. She is herself a victim of her dreams which are unfullfilled, and she blames her husband for this, and she knows her husband visits the brothel too, so she is off kilter and looking for attention, because she is angry with Curley. The drama centres on the impact these central characters with their various flaws have on each other.
There are three deaths - the old dog, Lennie who has the mind of a child , and the only female in the story, Curly’s attractive wife. The death of the old dog epitomises the death of sentimentality. The death of Lennie epitomises the death of the child figure and the death of Curley’s wife epitomises the death of the healthy attractive female figure. In other words these are the casualties of this patriachal societal structure at that time of great hardship in American history. What is significant, is that the rest of the men, including the black man and the elderly man named Candy, all survive the violent tumult that ensues.
One can say therefore that in very difficult times , therefore, it is the women and the children that become very vulnerable and their lives precarious and they suffer the most. The saying women and children first, takes on a new meaning. The meaning is, when times are really bad, women and children are the first casualties of the extraordinary stress financial hardship brings.