John Steinbeck: "Of Mice and Men"

The Novel
It is the time of the Great Depression (1929 to 1937). After the crash of the world's stock markets workers, shop owners, even successful businessmen,  find themselves unemployed, penniless and their families starving. Especially the farmers are severely affected by this worldwide economic crisis. Droughts hit the farmlands not only in the east of the US, the crops die and debts cannot be paid back. The farmers lose their land and thus join the migration wave to the west - to California, the promised land of prosperity and wealth. The west soon chokes in migrants, the wages are low and the competition for the few jobs on the farms is tough. Among these migrants we find George and Lennie arriving at a farm south of the city of Soledad in Salinas Valley, California. They can call themselves fortunate to have found work, especially because Lennie is naive and good-natured, but mentally retarded. He is a thirty-year-old child, unable to control his immense strength, so he cuddles not only mice to death. His friend and fatherly protector, George, has promised his aunt at her death bed to take care of Lennie and so he does: they travel together, they work together and they share everything in order to fulfil their dream – their dream of their own little farm with cows, chicken and Lennie tending the rabbits.  When the farm owner's beautiful, young wife is found dead in the barn their dream suddenly dissolves into a dark nothing and Lennie flees down to the river to hide  himself waiting for George …