Of Mice and Men
Author: John Steinbeck
Born: February 27, 1902; Salinas, California
Died: December 20, 1968; New York, New York
Type of Work: Novel
Type of Plot: Impressionistic realism
Time of Work: Mid-twentieth century
Places Discussed
*Salinas Valley (sah-LEE-nas). Rich agricultural region along north-central California’s Pacific coast in
which the novel is set. Steinbeck grew up in the Salinas Valley and set much of his important fiction there
and in the surrounding areas. In this short novel, his focus is comparatively narrow: All its action unfolds
between the Salinas River, a single ranch, and the nearby town of Soledad. Although the backdrop of the
story hints at social discontent—which is manifest in the dream of itinerant farmworkers George Milton and
Lennie Small to own their own land—the book’s drama centers on the personal problems of the giant
Lennie, who has a history of stumbling into serious trouble wherever he and George go.
*Salinas River. Stream next to which the story begins and ends. The novel opens as itinerant farmworkers
George and Lennie are hunkering down beside the pleasant river, discussing the new ranch to which they
are headed. They also talk about a little ranch they hope to buy for themselves, and the pastoral riverside
location evokes Lennie’s wistful yearnings to raise rabbits and live “off the fatta the lan’.”
Fearing that the simple Lennie may get into trouble with their new employers, George makes him promise to
return to this same spot by the river if something happens that forces them to flee the ranch. Later, Lennie
accidentally kills a woman and comes back to the river, where George finds him before the rest of the ranch
hands catch up with him. There, Lennie has a vision and then with George’s help, imagines the little place
with rabbits, where there is no trouble. As George instructs him to gaze across the river and see the place
with no trouble, he shoots Lennie with a pistol to prevent his being lynched by others.
Ranch. Salinas Valley farm on which George and Lennie take jobs as hands. George hopes only that he
and Lennie can keep their jobs long enough to build up a cash stake that will help them buy a small farm for
themselves. There is little description of the farm beyond its barn and the bunkhouse in which George and
Lennie are quartered. They arrive during what appears to be a barley harvest—work at which the powerful
Lennie excels. George and Lennie establish a pleasant camaraderie with some of their bunkmates, so their
immediate prospects seem favorable. Such trouble as arises comes from the owner’s family: his belligerent
son who unwisely taunts Lennie into a pointless physical confrontation, and the son’s wife, whose coquettish
flirtation with the man who humiliates her husband results in both her and Lennie’s deaths. Although George
and Lennie’s troubles have little to do with broader labor problems, it is significant that their downfall is
brought on by representatives of landowners.
Crooks’s room. Quarters of Crooks, the ranch’s African American cook, who has been living apart from the
main bunkhouse through the many years he has worked on the ranch. Although forced to live alone because
he is black, he has the ironic privilege of being the only hand on the ranch to enjoy true privacy. He hungers
for company other than his books but has never admitted another hand into his room before the night in
which Lennie wanders in to pay a friendly call. When another veteran ranch hand, Candy, soon follows,
Crooks grudgingly allows the intrusions but secretly relishes having human company, even if it consists only
of two fellow pariahs—a dimwit and a crippled amputee. Crooks’s hunger for companionship comes to the
surface when he begs to be allowed to join Lennie, Candy, and George’s plan to live on a ranch of their own.
In another of the book’s little ironies, its sole African American character also appears to be the ranch’s only
hand who was once a member of a family that owned its own land.
*Weed. Small Northern California farming town, about 330 miles north of Salinas, from which Lennie and
George were run out immediately before the narrative begins. Although George is afraid that he and Lennie
will lose their new jobs if anyone at the Salinas ranch finds out why they left Weed, he tells his guilty secret
to the skinner Slim. Mentioned several times throughout the novel, Weed is an icon of George and Lennie’s
perpetual failure to find stable work and homes, as well as an example of the great distances farm hands
must travel to find work.
Imaginary farm. Ten-acre plot of farmland that George hopes to buy for himself and Lennie from an elderly
couple whom he knows. Though a real place, the farm is appropriately at an unspecified remote location—a
place “you couldn’t find in hundred years.” The chances of George and Lennie ever actually owning the
place are so slim that it may as well be the farm existing in Lennie’s simple imagination: an idyllic place with
abundant crops, rabbits, and other animals that Lennie will tend, and no trouble.
So as not to jeopardize their employment on the Salinas ranch, George repeatedly instructs Lennie not to
mention the farm to anyone else. However, Lennie can not stay silent, and each ranch hand whom he tells
about the farm wants to be a part of it. George and Lennie’s quest to live on a place of their own is the
dominant motif through the novel, so it is fitting that Lennie is imagining life on the farm at the moment
George shoots him, thereby ending that dream for everyone.
Essay by: R. Kent Rasmussen
Source: Cyclopedia of Literary Places © 2003 by Salem Press, Inc.