Lennie OMAM Quotes

Lennie, Intro (2)

“large, lumbering”
“childlike”

Lennie, American Dream (2)

“get to tend the rabbits”
“live off the fatta the lan’”

Lennie, Companionship (2)

“to see whether he had done it just right”
“it’s a lot nice to go around with a guy you do know”

Lennie, Prejudice (3)

“the weak ones”
“dumb as hell”
“play jokes on ‘im cause he was too dumb”

Lennie, Intro Context (3)

Steinbeck told The New York Times in 1937 “All the characters are composites to a certain extent.”
“I am trying to write history - a visceral documentary”
“Lennie was a real person. He’s in an insane asylum in California right now. I worked alongside him for many weeks. He didn’t kill a girl. He killed a ranch foreman. Got sore because the boss had fired his a pal and stuck a pitchfork right through his stomach. I hate to tell you how many times. I saw him do it. We couldn’t stop him until it was too late.”

Lennie, American Dream Context (2)

According to James Truslow Adams, the American Dream is a life which is richer and fuller for everyone.
Steinbeck based the novella’s title on the poem by Robert Burns ‘To a Mouse’, with the main central lines being “the best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry, leaving nothing but grief and pain for promised joy”

Lennie, Context Companionship (1)

Itinerant workers in 1930s America often travelled alone, as low paid agricultural work was often seasonal and short-lived. So they moved from place to place looking for work and not earning enough to buy their own place.

Lennie, Context Prejudice (2)

Theory of natural selection applied to humans, which was popularised in 1930s America, where certain groups of people are better than others.
Ableist attitudes were normalised in 1930s America and were often viewed as a burden to society.