Book Review

Book review

Of Mice and Men is a story of work, loyalty and survival in a cold dog-eat-dog world. It was a book that involved the hardships of life and how they can affect you. And also it involves distrust, tragedy and death.
George Milton and Lennie Small have been trying to find work so they can work up enough pay to buy some land where they can be themselves and have nobody to be in charge of them but themselves. However, money is not their only problem, as Lennie is mentally challenged and extremely forgetful. When they tried to land a job in a small town called Weed, he tried to feel a girl's dress and she accused him of rape resulting in a lynch mob. Wherever they go, Lennie's problems are always a considerable problem for them.
However, while Lennie may be stupid, he is certainly extremely nice. He never gets mad at anyone and can't understand why anybody would ever try to hurt another person. He likes to pet soft things and that's sometimes what gets him in trouble. When he feels something soft, he doesn't want to stop petting it, which is why he got in trouble in Weed. Today he would be cared for, and taught to overcome his disabilities. But back then, everyone would have assumed he was crazy and locked him up in a cage and tied him to a chain. He probably would have spent his whole life like that if it wasn't for George.
George is different from Lennie in a lot of ways. For a starter, he's kind of small while Lennie is gigantic. George is sort of a guardian angel for Lennie. He watches over Lennie and makes sure nothing bad happens to him because he knows that Lennie is really nice despite his problems. He learned this when they were kids and all the kids in the neighborhood were by the river. He told Lennie to jump in as a joke and Lennie jumped in even though he couldn't swim. And when they got him out, he wasn't mad at George at all. In fact, he was thankful that he had helped him out, because he had completely forgotten that it was because of George that he was in there in the first place. From then on, George had been his sense, his memory, and his best friend, even though George gets tired of him every now and then and talks about how his life could be if Lennie wasn't around. Lennie is used to George “giving him hell” and thinks about it as a treat because he remembers everything George says and can recite what he says when he says it. Sometimes George will get mad at him for things like picking up dead field mice to pet, or doing things he told him not to do. But he never actually hits Lennie when he gets mad. He hits Lennie when someone makes Lennie nervous. For example, if he was petting something soft and someone besides George just all of a sudden took it away, Lennie would hold on and wouldn't let go. If George is there when things like that happen, he slaps Lennie in the face until he comes back to his senses.
This book was a very good book where you can connect with all the characters and understand everything about them. There are a lot of different people, each with their unique differences and similarities. On a scale of one to ten, I would give this book a ten. I don't like the fact that it had a sad ending, so normally I probably would have given it an eight. However, the ending was worded and written so perfectly, that it definitely deserves at least two points.
The sad ending was probably the only bad part. When the wife of one of the men who worked at the mill told Lennie to feel her hair, he thought it was so soft he just kept petting it. She told him to stop or he would “muss it up” and tried to pull away. Naturally, he hung on, causing her to scream. He covered her mouth and got mad at her for screaming and told her to stop. She didn't, of course, and he shook her to make her stop which resulted in her neck breaking. Her husband got together a lynch mob to avenge his wife. George wanted to spare Lennie the pain so he found him, told him to look across the river, and shot him in the back of the head.
In conclusion, Of Mice and Men was possibly one of the best and saddest books I have ever read. I think that reading this book during Literature Circles was an enthralling experience, and I hope that if we ever do Literature Circles again that I'll be able to read a book that was as good as this one.