John Steinbeck's classic novel, Of Mice and Men, was recently turned into a motion picture starring John Malkovich and Gary Sinise.

George Milton and Lennie Small are a dying breed — migrant workers who roam the Western frontier looking for work, food, and a place to bunk down. In Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck reveals the difficulty of dreaming big for such small things. Lennie and George are just ordinary men, yearning for their own space to find peace, leisure, and self-fulfillment: just "a little house and a couple of acres." But their plans go horribly wrong; they cannot seem to avoid their inevitable defeat just by yearning for a different fate.

By contrast, George is the big dreamer. He grumbles about how things are: "Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world." Smarter and more of a realist than Lennie, he is too aware of the empty, unstable life of itinerant workers. Having left Murray and Ready's in San Francisco to find ranch work in the Salinas Valley, George yearns to quit the life of bouncing from one job to the next with everything he owns wrapped in one bundle. And, though sometimes burdened by caring for the slow-witted Lennie, George loves and needs him. Lennie is the companion who keeps George's journey from being entirely stark and lonely.

John Steinbeck's novel, Of Mice and Men, tells of a fast friendship ended by tragedy in the lives of two Depression-era farm workers.

But uncontrollable forces work against the faithful partners. Steinbeck describes three days of in the life of Lennie and George. It is a hard life harvesting barley. The weather is hot and dry, the wages are scant, and atmosphere itself is unreliable on any given ranch. Moreover, the company the two men keep is a bad influence. As they travel from ranch to ranch, saving every penny they earn, George and Lennie set themselves apart from the other workers who spend their money on liquor, gambling, and women.

A life of card-games and flirtatious conversation are enticing. Eventually they lure and entrap Lennie, as much as he and George try to resist. Lennie has a history of erupting into violence when frustration gets the better of him. Finding himself in a situation he could not foresee or control, the strong but otherwise gentle giant inadvertently snaps the neck of the ranch-owner's wife. In that one instant, Lennie's impulsive act kills the dreams and plans that he and George have made.

John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men follows the lives of two Depression-era migrant farm workers.

And so the two run. George, unable to hate Lennie for ruining things, pities him yet loves him like a brother. But George also understands that the world is a vindictive place, with more cruel intent than Lennie could ever be capable of. Mindful of the reality that Lennie will suffer an inhumane death at the hands of the lynch mob pursuing them, George must make a dreadful choice. What is the humane thing to do? George cannot save Lennie's life; the situation is too far-gone. What can he do to ease Lennie's death?

George makes a fatalistic decision, and in that moment crushes any possibility of attaining the future he so desperately desires. It is a death for both men — Lennie loses his life, and George loses his dreams.

John Steinbeck wrote realistic novels drawing the reader's attention to the plight of working people in the U.S. during the 1930s.

Amazingly, the misery in Of Mice and Men did not prevent it from becoming an immediate hit when it was published in 1937. It's a quick read but the power of the book stays with you long after you finish. Steinbeck's forceful and realistic writing accentuate the book's structure. It is structured as a novel but written as a "play-novelette." After the book was released the author began to work on a stage version, which opened on Broadway later in 1937 and earned him the Drama Critics Award.

It seemed that everyone could be moved by the tragic plight of two solitary friends driven by a dream that was so simple yet so unattainable. And in this way, John Steinbeck aroused sympathy for the oft-forgotten breed of migrant workers, who suffered silently in the post-Depression era. He took a simple tale and wove into it a moving, empathic questioning of something usually taken for granted — Who could take part in the American Dream?

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