Mice
And Men
The
novel, which takes place during the Great Depression, begins beside the Salinas
River near Soledad, California, where two migrant workers, Lennie Small and
George Milton, are walking on their way to a nearby ranch. They had recently
escaped from a farm near Weed where Lennie, a mentally deficient yet docile
man, was wrongly accused of rape when he touched a woman to feel her soft dress.
George is his physical opposite, a small man with defined features. George scolds
Lennie for playing with a dead mouse and warns him not to speak when they arrive
at their new place of employment. When Lennie complains about not having ketchup
for the beans they eat for dinner, George becomes angry, telling Lennie that
he would be better off if he didn't have to travel with his retarded friend.
George soon delineates his dream: he and Lennie will raise enough money to buy
a patch of land, where they will have a small farm with a vegetable patch and
a rabbit hutch. The rabbit hutch is the only detail of the plan that Lennie
consistently remembers. George tells Lennie that, if he gets into trouble as
he did in Weed, he should return to the brush near the river and wait for George
to find him