Plot
The story starts with a short
description of Lennie and George. They are walking down a path through the
woods, heading towards a job at the ranch. Lennie sees a pond, and stops for a
drink. George takes a few sips, saying that they are close enough, and sets up
a camp for the night near some bushes and the pond. He sends Lennie off to get
some wood for a fire, meanwhile grumbling to himself about some farmer that
gave them a horrible estimate on how far away the ranch was. When Lennie comes
back, he is holding a few pieces of wood and has something in his hand. George
tells Lennie to give it over, but Lennie refuses. After 5 minutes of arguing
back and forth, George finally gets the object from Lennie and discovers it is
a small, dead mouse.
Lennie tells him that he likes fluffy
things because he likes to touch them. George tells him that when they go for
their job interview that he needs to keep quiet and not move, just let him do
the talking. He also tells him not to get into any trouble, or else he can’t
tend the rabbits on their future farm. The reason for this is that Lennie got
them fired from their old job because he wanted to touch a girl’s dress just to
feel it, but when she started yelling he got scared and wouldn’t let go. This
got them fired. George also tells Lennie that if he DOES ever get into trouble
to come wait in the bushes by this pond.
Lennie and George fall asleep, with
Lennie repeating all that George has told him. In the morning, they pack up
their tents and things and head to the ranch. Along the way, George quizzes
Lennie on what he told him the night before. They get to the ranch and are
shown their beds by a one-handed old swamper named Candy. Then, they meet the
boss. The boss is very annoyed with them, because they were supposed to get to
the ranch yesterday and go out early this morning working.
He questions George and Lennie, and
George does all the talking. However, the boss gets very suspicious and says
that they can’t put one over him, and that he has seen these type of acts
before. However, after a demonstration of Lennie’s strength, they are hired
immediately and ordered to go find the head of their team, Slim, after dinner.
They go out and work a bit, and then return to go to bed.
However, they first have an encounter
with Curley –and his wife. Curley shows immediate hate for Lennie, who gets
very confused. They are then told by Slim that Curley holds a grudge against
almost anyone bigger than him just because he is little, and thinks he is more
important than others because his father owns the ranch. Then, they meet Curley’s
wife. Lennie is immediately attracted to her because she is so pretty, and
wears bright colors. However, after George is told that she gets the other men
in trouble with Curley, he immediately tells Lennie to stay away from her, as
well as Curley, because he doesn’t want any accidents.
The boys go to bed, and wake up early
in the morning to start work. After work, they hear that one of the men’s dogs
has had puppies, and that he is giving them away. Upon hearing this, Lennie
wants one, and George agrees, as dogs are big and can’t be killed easy. Lennie
goes to ask for one and gets the one he likes, a “brown n ‘white spotted one”.
He wants to take it with him, but is told not to, as the pup needs it’s mom for
at least 2 more weeks.
When Lennie gets back, the men are
playing cards and talking about Candy’s dog. They keep telling him that the dog
is ancient, and smelly, and needs to be killed because he is just in too much
pain alive. Then, they tell him that they’ll kill him painlessly with a shotgun
right then. Candy puts up a fight, saying that he has had the dog since a pup,
and that he grew up with the dog etc., but in the end, a man named Carlson
convinces him that the dog should die and takes him away and mercilessly shoots
him.
After that, Candy lays quiet on his
bed, not playing cards or talking or anything. The other men go out to town,
and George and Lennie stay behind with Candy. Candy asks them why they even
came to the ranch in the first place if they don’t like it, and George explains
that they are saving up money to buy a farm of their own and then shipping out.
George says that they are going to have a room of their own, with a little
stove and a field of alfalfa, and a chicken coop, and a rabbit hutch, and their
own crops and everything, and they’ll have their own workers and if they don’t
like one of them, they’ll tell THEM to get out.
Candy smiles and tells them that he
knows he is getting old, and soon, the ranch boss is going to fire him. He says
that once he is fired, he is going to want to kill himself, because the ranch
is where he has found refuge. He offers them $300 in funds towards their farm
if he could come and live there with them. They agree, and say they won’t tell
anyone else and go on doing their jobs, and then collect their money and go.
George writes a letter to the owner of the farm and tells her that they’ll take
the farm.
That night, Curley and Lennie get
into a scuffle. Curley starts picking on Lennie, and tries to fight around with
him. Lennie, scared and not sure of what he’s done to get this kind of
treatment, is ordered by George to fight him. Lennie grabs Curley’s hand, and
refusing to let go, crushes it. George runs over and tells him to let go of
Curley’s hand, and threatens to blackmail Curley if he does anything to get
Lennie and him fired.
Lennie ends up staying home while the
men go out to town again for the night. He wanders around, looking for his
puppy, and accidentally finds Crooks, the black slave. He talks with him for
awhile, and Crooks scares him by telling him George might not come home. After
seeing that Lennie would get mad and kill him though, he apologizes, telling
him he is just kidding, and that of course George will come home.
While waiting for George, Lennie
babbles on to Crooks about how he “ain’t s’posed t’ get in no trouble, else he
won’t be able to tend to the rabbits”. He also tells Crooks about him, George,
and Candy setting up a farm, and that HE is going to be in charge of the
rabbits. At first, Crooks thinks he is crazy, but as he tells him more and
more, the more real it becomes to Crooks- so real, in fact, that he offers to chip
in a fair amount of money if he can live with them.
The men go to bed, waking up in the
morning and working more. Lennie, after work, plays with his puppy in the barn,
and accidently kills it. He sits there talking to himself, scolding himself for
not listening and wondering if this is considered bad enough behavior so he can’t
tend the rabbits. Curley’s wife comes in and sees him, so he quickly hides the
puppy under the hay. She starts to talk to him, but he moves away, telling her
he is not supposed to talk to her.
She grumbles, saying: “What is it, I’m
not allowed to talk to anyone?” Lennie softly explains that he is not allowed
to talk to her, or else he won’t get to tend to the rabbits. They start talking
anyway, and she allows him to touch her hair, since he likes touching soft
things. However, her vain spirit lead to her demise, because Lennie didn’t let
go, and she started screaming. Lennie didn’t want to get in trouble, and didn’t
understand, so he kept shaking her, and finally, broke her neck.
Lennie couldn’t understand what he
had done. He was amazed at his power. He KNEW that this was something bad, so
he covered her partway with hay and ran for the bushes, like George had told
him. Presently, Slim came in the barn looking for Lennie. Instead, he found
Curley’s wife, dead. He knew that Curley would go after Lennie immediately, and
he couldn’t blame him. He told George, and George knew exactly where Lennie had
gone.
George took his gun with him, and
went after Lennie. Meanwhile, Lennie was at the pond. People were talking to
him in his head- first it was his Aunt Clara, telling him how awful he was, and
how he never ever listened, and that he should be more grateful of George. She
reminded him that when he was scared, George was there, when he was hungry, George
found him the best food. Then there came a big rabbit, and it told him what a
wonderful life George could have had without Lennie. He reminds him that George
could have had a family, his little farm, a better life in general without
Lennie.
This terrified Lennie. He yelled at
the rabbit, telling it that George would NEVER say anything like that or do
anything like that. Just then, George came. He saw Lennie yelling and asked
what about. Lennie told him, and George nodded. He could hear Curley and the
ranch men coming in the distance, and he knew they would shoot Lennie down.
Lennie told George that he wanted to
go to their little farmhouse right away. George nodded and agreed. “Its right over
that hill right there,” he told Lennie, pointing. Lennie nodded and said, “Let’s
go now.” He started walking, and as he did, George raised his gun, laid it against
the back of Lennie’s head, and killed him painlessly in one clean shot.
While many might see George killing
Lennie as cruel, I and my dad looked upon it as an act of kindness and mercy.
George knew that Curley would have killed him anyway, and he wanted his friend
to die peacefully, not scared and in pain. In a sense, he didn’t even lie to
his friend- Lennie did get to go to his “farmhouse” and tend to the rabbits, in
the end.
