 Hello and welcome to a video summarizing everything you need to know about the novella of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. Now this video will go over everything you need to understand when it comes to the plot of this novella, but also what we'll begin by doing is looking at context and important contextual factors that influence John Steinbeck when writing this. We'll then examine the key characters and what you need to understand with all of the characters in this novella and then we'll end by looking at themes. So let's begin. Now when it comes to understanding the novella as a whole, let's first look at what essentially happens throughout this story. Now do bear in mind that this story takes place over four days, starting essentially on Thursday evening and ending on Sunday. Now the story features two displaced migrant workers called George Milton and Lenny Small, so George and Lenny, and they move from place to place in California in search of what work opportunities in the 1930s. Now in the story they find work on a ranch in a place called Soledad and in Spanish this means solitude. Now when they begin to work on the ranch, both George and Lenny meet other characters who emphasise the sense of loneliness and difficulty that accompanies life for migrant workers on a ranch especially in 1930s America. Now we learn that George is a small intelligent man who looks after his friend who's much larger, however Lenny has a learning disability. Now Lenny's strength does become increasingly problematic. In fact we do realise even from the opening of the story that they had to leave the previous work on another ranch as a result of Lenny's own uncontrollable strength and this strength becomes increasingly problematic in this new ranch and it becomes clear that he does not understand how much damage that he can cause. Now George and Lenny meet many notable characters in the ranch. This includes a ranch owner, his conniving son Curly, his lustful and lascivious wife known as Curly's wife but also George and Lenny meet the most respected and revered ranch worker called Slim. Other notable characters in this story include Candy, the elderly ranch worker, Crooks the only African-American worker who lives separately from the men and Carlson who kills Candy's old but loyal dog and at several points in this story George and Lenny discuss a dream of owning their own ranch and working for themselves but this is shown to be an impossibility and things do come to a head at the end of the story when Lenny accidentally kills Curly's wife and George's only option is to shoot him before he's caught and this therefore of course means he kills any hope that they both had of achieving their dream. Now when we're looking at this story it's really important especially when you are writing about this story either for your coursework or exams to understand the contextual factors that Steinbeck was influenced by and of course even what he wants to illustrate through all of these key characters in the story. Now of course do bear in mind that this story was set in the 1930s America and this was at the height of the Great Depression bear in mind that the Great Depression started historically speaking in 1929 as a result of the crash of Wall Street which is basically America's financial district. Now due to that crash and obviously the resultant economic depression there was a Great Depression where lots of people lost jobs, a lot of jobs also and employment was in very short supply. Now one thing to bear in mind is that Steinbeck was born in Salinas in California and this is a state where agriculture was the leading industry and of course the state was also highly affected by the Great Depression. Now conflict arose in Salinas in the early decades of the 20th century over the squeezing out of small family farms by large-scale commercial growers who employed cheap seasonal workers. Now community structures deteriorated in where Steinbeck was born and labour practices became really harsh and unfair and of course this is also even reflected in how George, Lenny and the ranch workers are treated. Now in Salinas during Steinbeck's time the civic instability destroyed the ideal of a good society which was shared democratically by all citizens. Now also bear in mind one of the things that Steinbeck really really found influential in his writing is as a result of him working on sugar ranchers himself in the 1920s this is of course before the 1930s depression his experience in ranchers and interacting with different labourers is one of the things that really gave him inspiration for the list of characters that he has written in Mycemen. Now of course the novella itself was completed in 1937 during the Great Depression which is a time of conflict between the American dream of capitalist land ownership and the unsteady economy as I mentioned before the Great Depression was triggered by the collapse of Wall Street in 1929 and of course this also collapsed a lot of people's dreams of attaining land ownership and achieving the American dream. Now in this story Steinbeck does portray the social alienation of migrants like George and Lenny and he dramatizes the struggle of working people striving to become independent landowners. By the late 1930s as a result of the Great Depression job security had reached its lowest ebb so there were mechanical combines which enabled for example five men to do the work of 300 people and this produced over half of the nation's grain harvests in 1938. Now this is a situation that's depicted in the novella a social climate of irregular work for migrant workers low wages, squalid living conditions reflected in the ranch and also emotional deprivation shown through just how lonely a lot of ranch workers really are. Now do bear in mind that when you're discussing of my some men in this context remember that what this story is showing is this unhappy fraternity of would-be pioneers. So you've got the burly buck, buckers, the buckhouse hand, the mule skinner, the seasonal drifters and of course the lonely woman who's embodied in Curley's wife and all of these people and all of these different characters in the ranch conflict with the ranch owner, his son and the existing social structure. So do bear in mind that in this story you witness two types of struggle. The first being the private local struggle of the California valley so two drifters trying to escape a cycle of depression by saving up for a small farm of their own but the second struggle is the tragic public struggle of all places and times where men would challenge to discover and maintain the humanity in the face of really difficult overwhelming forces characterized by the Great Depression. Now the second contextual factor to bear in mind which influenced Steinbeck is the dust bowl. Now the dust bowl which is also known as the dirty 30s was a period of severe dust storms that caused major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands in the 1930s. Now the phenomenon of the dust bowl was caused by severe drought combined with the failure by many farmers to apply dry land farming methods to prevent wind erosion. So extensive deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains in the preceding decade so in the 1920s had displaced a lot of the natural deep rooted grass that normally kept the soil in place and trapped moisture even during periods of drought and high winds. Now during the drought of the 1930s because there were no natural anchors to keep the soil in place a lot of the topsoil in these prairies dried they turned into dust and they blew away with the winds causing this infamous dust bowl and at times the clouds in the sky became really really black reaching all the way to the East Coast cities like New York, Washington DC and this is from the agricultural lands in the Midwest and the South which is a huge kind of area to cover. Now these immense dust storms which were given names like black blizzards, black rollers often reduced visibility to just a few feet or less and the drought and erosion of the dust bowl affected a hundred million acres and it was centered on the panhandles of Texas, Oklahoma and nearby sections of New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas. Now hundreds of thousands of people as a result of this as a result of the dust bowl were forced to leave their farms many of these families who are known as okies and because many came from Oklahoma had to leave and migrate to places like California where they found economic conditions really difficult and this was even made worse because of the Great Depression so Steinbeck really is using this context to illustrate and especially in this story just how gruelling, challenging and often unrewarding life was for migrant farmers and just as Georgian and he had a dream of having a better life on their own farm the great plains farmers who lived near the dust bowl and in the dust bowl dreamed of finding a better life in California when they had to leave their homes but of course they never did. The other important contextual factor that influenced Steinbeck and especially it influenced how he characterized and described Lenny's or rather Curly's wife is Hollywood. Now the 1920s and 30s were a key era and a key period for cinema in America and the growth of the Hollywood film industry and this machine was dominated at this time by big studios including Universal, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Paramount Films. Now the films that they produced were a form of escapism during the aftermath of the depression reinstating the mythical American values of individualism classlessness and progress and it's easy to see how vulnerable, isolated women like Curly's wife might have seen in Hollywood's promises and the industry that made them the chance for a different existence. Now one thing to remember with Hollywood essential to its success is the archetypal leading man and of course the leading lady. However despite the promising fame and stardom Hollywood had the capacity which was really well known to chew up and spit out a conveyor belt of actors and actresses chosen for the similarities to this conforming and very narrow ideal of physical appearance such as being a beautiful leading man or beautiful leading lady. Now female stars of the silver screen were idolized across America for example you only need to think of for example how Marilyn Monroe was idolized however they also did conversely set standards of beauty that were essentially unattainable to ordinary women and it's those glamorous looks that Curly's wife is really desperate to believe that she has. Also these Hollywood ladies did play femme fatales and this is French for deadly women and they were seen and depicted in Hollywood as seductresses, they were demonized and also feared for their allure. Of course again if you think about how Curly's wife is demonized she's really characterizing the story as a femme fatale with other ranch workers. Now remember that the femme fatale is inherently bound up with promiscuity and the rejection of motherhood and Curly's wife's actions in the bond just before her death can be seen in this way as she encourages stroking from Lenny which is obviously a sexualized action which triggers a response from Lenny where he confuses sexuality with maternity and this leads to his bewildered panic which leads him to smother and kill her. Now another really important contextual factor to bear in mind is America in the 1930s was a period also influenced by Jim Crow laws. Now this of course supplies to the character of Crookes now do bear in mind that the Jim Crow laws basically state and local laws that enforced during this period racial segregation which just means separation between black and white people in America and these laws were essentially enacted from the 1890s and they stayed enforced until around 1965 so what this laws did was it led to many African-Americans facing a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages and these laws generally cause things like housing segregation so for example a lot of African-Americans started to live in classes of poor ghettos bank lending prejudice so for example getting loan and money from the bank was really difficult if you were African-American and also job discrimination especially white collar jobs so really respected jobs which obviously all of this kind of combined and led to a lot of African-American people finding themselves very very disadvantaged very poor and very separated from mainstream society and of course this is even shown through Crookes' character in the completely separate area to the other ranch house workers now bear in mind that the Jim Crow laws led to segregated public schools for instance segregated public places separated public transportation and even the segregation of things like restrooms restaurants and drinking fountains for whites and blacks and the US military was even segregated as were government workplaces and facilities for African-Americans so basically the things that they could use and allowed to use were consistently inferior and underfunded when compared to what was available to European Americans the white Americans and sometimes even some of these facilities didn't exist at all so Jim Crow laws eventually were overalled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 now all of these contextual factors really influenced how Steinbeck formulated and created all the main characters in this story now of course the first major character is George and do bear in mind that his name George means husbandman and this is a person who cultivates the land now George is associated in this story with commitment and brotherly love especially towards Lenny and he's quite self-sacrificial he gives up much that would make his own life fulfilling in order to have companionship with Lenny also we find that when they do arrive on the ranch so both George and Lenny George is really admired by Slim Candy and Crooks and he's really depicted by Steinbeck as being a careful decision maker he also is very good at managing Lenny's natural resource of strength George also learns responsibility in the final scene when he decides to kill Lenny in order to protect him from lynching which is based on the paradox of being cruel to be kind now the second important character is Lenny so his name the full version being Leonard means as strong as a lion so whilst he's very strong he's also blessed with childish girl now Lenny is actually a figure taken from Steinbeck's own experience now this is Steinbeck's own words he says Lenny was a real person he's in an insane asylum in California he killed a ranch foreman got sore as the boss had fired his pal and struck a pitchfork right through his stomach so do bear in mind that the character of Lenny is actually based on somebody that Steinbeck himself had met now Lenny stands as a symbol of humankind's animal nature yet he's also primitive who responds by instinct and whose mind has really never learned how to control his body however Lenny is also depicted as a victim and a symbol of a world that's rarely fair tolerant or understanding towards weaker people like him moreover Lenny is really really powerful in terms of his strength his physical might however he's really really powerless without the leadership of George to direct this power now bear in mind that the mouse for instance the mouse that he has in his pocket this is a novel symbol for his own inevitable doom so Lenny carries his own destiny the mouse in his own pocket now the other character is that of Slim so Slim is the mule driver and he's a permanent employee of the ranch so he represents kind of employees in how they were treated especially the strong employees before mechanization mule drivers who are at the top of the social tree and they earned lots of good money on ranchers now Slim epitomizes fairness sound judgment and dignified acceptance and he's really respected on the ranch by his peers and superiors he also accepts and sanctions George and Lenny within the bunk house community and he's really depicted by Steinbeck as being the conscience of the novel and the voice of truth he also is one of the characters that understands that George probably did kill Lenny but he didn't kill Lenny out of self-defense he killed him perhaps maybe because he was protecting him and at the close of the novel Slim does abdicate the power that he has being at the top of the ranch house hierarchy now in contrast to Slim is Curly's character so he's the boss's son and he's really depicted as being a very hyper masculine symbol of the angry young generation of the 1930s for example he's an ex lightweight boxer also Curly is depicted as very insecure he has a grudge against bigger tall men than him he almost has a Napoleonic complex Curly is also ostracized from the ranch community because he represents white collar power bear in mind that he is the boss's son but he's also in a weird position but because he's not the boss in his own right however he also realizes that he can't really garner the respect that he wishes moreover Curly is rendered a laughing stock because of the actions of his own flirtatious wife and so his short stature as well as a glove full of Vaseline just makes him a caricature to the other men moreover Curly has an inability to create a meaningful relationship with his wife which renders him part responsible for her death because he can't create a meaningful relationship with her she seeks intimacy she seeks connection with other men and of course it's this kind of seeking for connection with Lenny that ultimately kills her so he is indirectly responsible for her death now of course this leads to Curly's wife being the other important character now she's the only woman on the ranch and she marries Curly not due to love we discover but actually due to the limited choices that she faces woman in 1930s America now Curly's wife is filled with adolescent rage at missing out at what she felt was a chance of a Hollywood career and her escape route was seen as the Hollywood dream by her however her namelessness even the fact that we don't know her name she's just known simply as Curly's wife is an ironic indicator that in spite of this Hollywood dream that she has she will never be famous moreover in the story she's presented consistently as a sexual commodity and her overt sexuality is actually the opposite it's an inversion of George's puritanical nature that's why George never trusts her also like crooks she is starved of companionship and she's starved of acceptance and she stays consistently as an outsider moreover bear in mind that Curly's from a biblical perspective fulfills a role of Eve in the Genesis story she's a temptress she's a femme fatale the destroyer of paradise the one who shatters the dream that George and Lenny have of attaining this American dream of course the other isolated character is the only African-American man who's also disabled on the ranch and this is crooks so he carries a double burden firstly he's black but also he's partially disabled that's why he's called crooks like his crooked bent and he has this double burden in a society that's prejudiced against both so crooks really becomes this paradoxical figure that's conditioned by an environment of brokenness, cynicism, disillusionment low self-esteem and he also has diminished status arguably he probably occupies the lowest status on the ranch house community also crooks's response to how he's treated by other men is one almost of intellectualized fortitude and resilience and he's part spokesman for Steinbeck moreover symbolic objects in his place where he's staying characterize his world for example broken harnesses, split collars medicine bottles, a tattered dictionary and walled civil code all of these show his world and his brokenness of course the other character is candy so he's a disabled swamper and he's used as scapegoat for the brutality of the ranch house community now candy is a sentimentalized figure by Steinbeck and he's the object of reader sympathy he offers George his life savings as a way to try and attain this American dream that both George and Lenny are striving for he tries to secure a farm partnership and attain this American dream also candy is inescapably linked to his uselessness with his old dog so both candy and his old dog who have given all their lives to the ranch now are portrayed as helpless maltreated and ultimately cast aside and of course the dog is killed maybe this foreshadows candy's eventual death also candy is arguably responsible for the scene of the greatest pathos sadness in the novel when he looks for help from face to face once a death sentence of his dog is pronounced so this is arguably one of the greatest saddest scenes in this novella now the other character to bear in mind is that of Carlson so do bear in mind that Carlson in contrast to these other characters he stands as the embodiment of the detached migrant worker for example he pressurizes candy into having his dog shot and he carries out this killing himself with evident capability also Carlson has no problem with destruction and the unintentional cruelty that's part of this identity on the migrant farm he also owns the Luger pistol that George later uses to kill Lenny and Carlson essentially represents the force of destruction that's key to modern capitalist USA now in terms of themes that Steinbeck explores in this novella the first of course is the American dream so the title of mice and men actually comes from a poem called to a mouse by the 18th century Scottish poet Robert Burns now in this poem Burns writes after unintentionally plying out the nest of a mouse that and to quote from the poem the best laid schemes of mice and men gang off to a galley in other words often go awry and leave a snort leave us nothing but grief and pain for promised joy okay so the title of this novel of mice and men is actually taken from this poem by Robert Burns so this title then is not only a reference to the poor mice that Lenny accidentally kills but to everyone whose dreams are destroyed and the mention of mice also suggests something small and feeble pitted against something so overwhelmingly strong in the shape of fate and destiny now bear in mind that the American dream arose from how America was first populated so this idea and this notion of the American dream came from how it was even established as people came from almost every country and background from around the world however they were united by belief that America would give opportunities denied to them in their home country in the old world now American history reveals that some the people who migrated to America did strike it rich in the USA but many more far more lost their lives and savings in this futile quest to attain the American dream so this novella of mice and men approaches this theme by showing that the American dream is still an impossible mission and an untenable fantasy for many now if we think about the American dream as symbolized by this ranch that George and Lenny want to have this coalition that they form so George Lenny and ultimately Candy comes in this represents the American dream in its most fundamental state capitalism in its purest form because firstly it shows this desire for that George Lenny and Candy have to work for themselves and not for others secondly it obviously shows the desire for material wealth and spiritual fulfillment and thirdly there's this desire centered on work profit and independence now the Californian coastal valley where the action takes place in the story is the real setting so it's a small confined quacy primitive place and it's a dream farm and it's kind of recited by Lenny almost as this religious garden of Eden now even before the story begins the description of the valley grove in chapter one suggests symbolically that paradise might actually already be spelt this Eden that George and Lenny strive to own might actually still be tainted already okay so for example this is illustrated when Lenny gulps the water from the narrow pool at the beginning in the first chapter and George warns him I ain't sure that's good water so if the land itself is poisoned from the start if it's a poison chalice then the idea of living off the fat of the land is similarly a poisoned fantasy so even from the start Steinbeck is showing this unattainability of this American dream now many people who've read this and critics really see George's relationship with Lenny in contrasting ways so for example when it comes to tain the American dream George is a radical leader he attempts to lead Lenny a symbol of the masses to a utopia to owning this farm Lenny because he's too strong and untrustworthy however fails George hence the utopia fails the masses fail the leader however another way to see it is that George is just simply a worker trying to improve his lot in life by becoming a landowner and this full hardy ambition collapses in the vessel of destruction which is Lenny's killed off and George basically at the end of the story just ends up forming a new alliance with Slim the adjusted worker who functions successfully within his class and accepts that the American dream is something that's unattainable so there's two ways to really see the American dream and how it's depicted in this story now another final way to see it so this is from a psychoanalytical perspective from a psychology perspective if you see it in terms of the lens of a key psychologist called Carl Jung Lenny could be considered as George's shadow self so Lenny shadows his guardian figure he imitates his actions in response to George's manipulation however the antagonistic aggressive forces within George's psychological framework are repressed and instead he projects this onto Lenny using Lenny as a take-out for his own fault and this is George's fault that they are late for arriving at the ranch but blame is assigned to the shadow self which is Lenny okay so that's another way to interpret this now in this interpretation in this psychology interpretation Lenny's death stands for more than just simply a mercy killing because Lenny is the embodiment of George's projected frustrations the killing of Lenny is also a symbolic eradication of those qualities in himself that George despises and it's a form of personal release now the other important theme is this Darwinian idea of the survival of the fittest now Steinbeck's principle aim is to show in this story that without the civilizing forces of companionship we become almost like animals feeding off others and spurning the weak which is Charles Darwin's own concept of the survival of the fittest and this partly explains the preponderance of animal imagery and symbolism in the text the story appears to be almost like a realist fable where the weak animals die rather than a traditional one in which humility generally gets the better of pride and Steinbeck implicitly criticizes his capitalist society and the American dream culture which cares little for society's weakest members now Steinbeck's point is exemplified in the way that characters represent varying forms of prejudice so there's physical disability which is represented through candy gender so which you know women face a lot of prejudice shown in Curley's wife racial prejudice shown in crooks and mental disability prejudice shown in Lenny and of course social class which is emphasized through how Curley occupies a higher social status than the other men so the story of Mycemen is a story of the human potential to rise above the animal level to a finer spirit however this novella shows the power for society formed by nature's lower forces and the power that this has to destroy this finer fragile human aspiration now if you look at Lenny he's a large, simple minded and clumsy character his physical appearance is most like an animal and he's first described as looking like a bear with big paws walking heavily now Lenny's forming approach to crooks in the doorway of the black man's quarter is almost again like that of a shy dog who desperately wants to make friends with a hostile man and at the end of the story when George puts the gun behind his head to kill him Lenny is identified as his old dog who's early been killed in a similar fashion now in this story those who display the basis elements of nature are Curley and Carlson who lack all sensitivity for those more helpless and weaker than they are so Carlson's shows his animalistic nature by pushing Candy into allowing him to shoot his beloved old dog whilst Curley is epitome of man's lower nature so Curley is driven to compete constantly it's as if he lives in the way the physically fit must survive and as with the lower order animals they must act only for self gratification so for example he joins a ranch hands and visiting a brothel in the nearest town even though he's recently married now Candy Curley's wife and even for a brief moment crooks all also show a need to dream which in this novel symbolizes reaching for something above one's brute nature okay yet it's George and Lenny who best embody a spirit that aspires and sustains human connections and it's been said that Lenny's obsession with mice and rabbits represents his yearning for human warmth and of all characters in this story only George and Lenny have a human bond that can be classified as being in the spirit of a family now both Lenny and George travel together they have a history they have responsibility and a commitment to each other and they need each other and in the first scene before they reach the ranch George and Lenny reassure each other of their situation so they say to talk to you that gives a damn about us however Candy the old swamper hopes to become part of this family and we see their rise above animal nature which is consistent with their rise above ego gratification and they try their best to soar above mere self for somebody else and indeed concern for the shared future rather than animalistic survival from one day to the next is illustrated okay so that's really it when it comes to understanding this story when it comes to understanding the plot and not show the key characters but also important elements to understand when it comes to contextual factors as well as themes do bear in mind that we do have an ultimate English GCSE course that goes into lots and lots of depth when it comes to memorizing and remembering this and indeed other plays and novels that you're studying for English literature but also how to pass your English language exams check out the link in this description box and sign up for this course thank you so much for listening