Of Mice and Men

Of Mice and Men was published in 1937 and is a short novel, usually described as a novella, written by John Steinbeck. It was his second book about the migrant labourers of California, after the short-story collection The Pastures of Heaven, and it follows the movement of workers who were displaced by the Depression and the agricultural economy of the state. Steinbeck had worked on the same kind of farms, and the bunkhouse and the fields in the book are drawn from that experience.

The structure is closer to a stage play than a novel: a few scenes, a limited cast, and a plot that moves toward a conclusion the reader can see coming for most of the second half. Steinbeck's interest is in the companionship between the two men, which is the only thing either of them has, and in what it costs the pair when the stronger of them cannot be protected. The other workers on the ranch, including Candy, Crooks and Curley's wife, are drawn with an economy that has kept the book in classrooms even where its language has been argued about.

The novel has been adapted for film three times, most notably in 1939 and 1992, and for the stage repeatedly; it was a Broadway play within a year of publication. It was also among the most frequently challenged American books of the twentieth century, usually for its language, and it remains a standard text in secondary school reading. It is a standalone. It is also the shortest of Steinbeck's major works, and the one most often assigned to teenagers, partly because the whole of it can be held in the head at once.