Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Submitted by DebR

Bio/Intro:As a way to support freedom from censorship, I made a pledge at the beginning of this week to choose one book I hadn't yet read from the list of 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990 – 2000, read it, and review it on my blog. Earlier this week I went to our local library, carrying a list of a half-dozen books from the challenged list – all classics I had never gotten around to reading yet. Unfortunately, our small-town library has some serious funding problems and as I went down the list, I realized that all five of my first choices either weren't in the card catalog at all or were already checked out.

It was with a sinking heart that I realized that the only book they had out of the half-dozen titles I'd brought with me on a scrap of paper was “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck, a book I had managed to successfully avoid throughout all my years in school and beyond, because I was so sure I wouldn't like it. I had even avoided watching any of the various movie adaptations of it over the years, although I saw enough previews of the last one that, as I read the book, I couldn't help but see and hear Gary Sinise and John Malkovich as George and Lennie.

I still SO didn't want to read it, but a pledge is a pledge, so I checked the blasted thing out, brought it home, and finished it later that afternoon.

So this is the part where I tell you how wrong I was to think I wouldn't like it, right? Um, no. The story had wonderfully spare and evocative language, it raised a lot of thought-provoking questions, it haunted me – it still haunts me…I'm still thinking of it days later – and I detested it every bit as much as I thought I would.

What we have here is a basic incompatibility of philosophy. I'm an unflagging optimist, who believes in things like love, hope, and redemption. My core outlook on life is that as long as we have breath, there's some sort of hope, however slim, that things can get better. Steinbeck, on the other hand, seems to have been very much the pessimist, whose outlook on life was “life's a bitch and then you die”…or “life's a bitch and then you kill your only friend in the world.”

I can also see very clearly why this book has been challenged over the years. Unlike some of the books on the list, whose presence on it baffles me, I can see a lot that is offensive in “Of Mice and Men.” There's cruelty, overt racism, pervasive sexism, and then there's the huge question that is the point of the story: is it ever ok – ever merciful – for one human being to kill another?

Someone reading the previous two paragraphs might come to the conclusion that I would support this book being challenged, or even banned, but they'd be dead wrong. The very fact that the story contains those sorts of elements and raises those difficult questions is a reason it should be read. It's a reason I probably should have read it a long time ago, even though I disliked it intensely. It's the reason that I would include it as required reading if I was teaching an American Lit class, and wouldn't let someone like me get away with avoiding it for so long. Refusing to look at the hard questions and ugly problems of life doesn't make them go away, because we can't fight what we won't face. That's a truth even a die-hard optimist can support.

My subjective grade on the bell curve of my personal biases: D (for dismal, depressing and defeatist)

My objective grade on the merits of the story: A