Of Mice and Men
by John Steinbeck
Summary
Itinerant ranch workers George Milton and the gentle, immensely strong but intellectually disabled Lennie Small dream of one day owning a small farm of their own, a fragile hope that unravels amid the loneliness and desperation of Depression era migrant labor in California. Steinbeck writes with spare, almost theatrical economy, building the novella toward one of the most devastating endings in American fiction. The book's compassion for society's most vulnerable workers has kept it a staple of classrooms for generations.
Historical Context & Significance
The 1938 Pulitzer for fiction went to John P. Marquand's The Late George Apley, a satire of Boston society. Steinbeck would win the Pulitzer three years later for The Grapes of Wrath, but this shorter, equally acclaimed novella received no prize of its own.