“Another book that was ruined for me by school.
Seriously, why the hell do they have kids read this in junior high? Because it’s short? Is that it? It’s fucking short, so fuck it, at least when they only read 10 pages they’ll get 15% of it? Plus we can just talk about the ending in class and they’ll understand more pop culture shit?
Consider the big themes in the book.
A) The best laid plans of mice and men:
This is a totally stupid theme to teach to 8th graders. Why? Because they are just now laying those plans, and who is going to listen to that nonsense when you’re in the thick of it? “I know everyone else is a fuck-up, but I’m different!” You haven’t yet made the terrible discovery of adulthood, which is that you’re going to live a life that looks pretty much like everyone else’s. You might have a dream that you’re going to make something of yourself and live off the fatta the lan, but you probably won’t. You will probably not be special. And this, to me, is what adulthood is. It’s looking at that problem and deciding what you’re going to do about it. You can face it and say, Well, I give up then. Buy A Chrysler minivan. Or you can say, If none of this matters anyway, I might as well go for something that makes me happy. But anyway, I think that this is a crisis of adulthood that is not intended for youth and doesn’t speak to them. I think they understand it intellectually, but I think very few of them understand it emotionally.
B) Adult Friendships
Multiple, multiple comments in the book about how you don’t often see working guys traveling together, but that it’s kind of nice. And the main friendship in the book provides for a possible future that’s a little better. George certainly gives Lennie a much better shot, and Lennie gives George something to live for beyond whorehouses. In 8th grade, you haven’t yet experienced the whole adult thing. And let me tell you, adult friendships, TOTALLY DIFFERENT than 8th grade friendships.
While not a thematic element, a third thing:
C) This book is not designed to make readers happy
I interact with a lot of readers who dislike a book or movie or whatever because they didn’t “like” anyone in it. Most of the people in Of Mice and Men are kinda assholes. Nobody ends up with what they deserve. Bad guys aren’t really punished, good guys are, and the one female character gets killed, which I wouldn’t call deserved so much as avoidable.
In the book Reality Is Broken, the author talks about why we like games a lot more than we like reality. Why do we like Farmville more than we like farming?
Because games are set up to please us. Reality is not. Which is why the title: Reality is Broken.
Of Mice and Men is a good book. The writing is tuned. The storytelling uses a lot of classic elements in really clever ways. We see the gun WAY before the ending. We see the setting for the book’s end at the very beginning. We get tension rather than surprise, and stuff happens.
But I think a big part of why people don’t like it is because you read it at a time when you don’t like stuff where bad things happen to good people, nothing works out right, and the bad guys walk away whistling.
As we get older, we get a little better at accepting these narratives. A little. Not great. Ask anyone about No Country for Old Men, their primary complaint seems to be that the bad guy doesn’t get punished.
After reading this again, probably 20 years later, I just wish schools would radically re-consider their texts. I don’t think we’re doing kids any favors by handing them this book. I think what we’re really doing is a favor to ourselves. No need to keep up with contemporary literature. No need to seek out texts with themes more appropriate to the age group. No, instead, let’s just keep handing them Steinbeck, and let’s keep marveling at the huge number of adults who haven’t picked up a book since high school. “