Chapter One

Of Mice and Men summary book

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‘God, you’re a lot of trouble,’ said George. ‘I could get along so easy and so nice if I didn’t have you on my tail. I could live so easily.’

Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world…With us it ain’t like that. We got a future.

Someday – we’re gonna get the jack together and we’re gonna have a little house and a couple of acres an’ a cow and some pigs and…. An’ have rabbits.

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Chapter Two

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Against the wall were eight bunks, five of them made up with blankets and the other three showing their burlap ticking. Over each bunk there was nailed an apple box with the opening forward so that it made two shelves for the personal belongings of the occupant of the bunk.

‘Well, I never seen one guy take so much trouble for another guy. I just like to know what your interest is.’

Both men glanced up, for the rectangle of sunshine in the doorway was cut off. A girl was standing there looking in. She had full rouged lips and wide-spaced eyes, heavily made up. Her fingernails were read.

...he moved with a majesty only achieved by royalty and master craftsman. He was a jerkline skinner, the prince of the ranch, capable of driving ten, sixteen even twenty mules with a single line to the leaders…There was a gravity in his manner and a quiet so profound that all talk stopped when he spoke. His authority was so great that his word was taken on any subject, be it politics or love.

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Chapter Three

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‘Oh, I dunno. Hardly none of the guys ever travel together. I hardly never seen two guys travel together. You know how the hands are, they just come in and get their bunk and work a month, and then they quit and go out alone. Never seem to give a damn about nobody. It jus’ seems kinda funny a cuckoo like him and a smart little guy like you travenlin’ together.’

Candy said, ‘I ain’t much good with o’ny one and. I lost my hand right here on this ranch. That’s why they give me a job swampin’. An’ they give me two hunderd an’ fifty dollars ‘cause I lost my hand. An’ I got fifty more saved up right in the bank, right now. Tha’s three hunderd, and I got fifty more comin’ the end a the month. Tell you what –‘ He leaned forward eagely. ‘S’pose I went in with you guys. Tha’s three hunderd an’ fifty bucks I’d put in. I ain’t much good, but I could cook and tend the chickens and how the garden some. How’d that be?

‘I ought to of shot that dog myself, George. I shouldn’t ought to of let no stranger shoot my dog.’

Curley stepped over to Lennie like a terrier….Lennie covered his face with his huge paws and bleated with terror…The next minute Curley was flopping like a fish on a line, and his closed fist was lost in Lennie’s big hand.

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Chapter Four

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Crooks, the negro stable buck, had his bunk in the harness room; a little shed that leaned off the wall in the barn……And he had books, too; a tattered dictionary and a mauled copy of the California civil code for 1905….A pair of large gold-rimmed spectacles hung from a nail on the wall above his bed.

‘A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody. Don’t make no difference who the guy is, long’s he’s with you. I tell ya,’ he cried, ‘I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an’ he gets sick.’

‘I see hunderds of men come by on the road an’ on the ranches, with their bindles on their back an’ that same damn thing in their heads. Hunderds of them. They come, an’ they quit an’ go on; an’ every damn one of ‘em’s got a little piece of land in his head. An’ never a God damn one of ‘em ever gets it.’

She closed on him. ‘You know what I could do?’Crooks seemed to grow smaller, and he pressed himself against the wall. ‘Yes, ma’am.’‘Well, you keep your place then. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain’t even funny.’Crooks had reduced himself to nothing. There was no personality, no ego – nothing to arouse either like or dislike. He said, ‘Yes, ma’am’ and his voice was toneless.

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Chapter Five

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He said he was gonna put me in the movies. Says I was a natural. Soon’s he got back to Hollywood he was gonna write to me about it.’ She looked closely at Lennie to see whether she was impressing him. ‘I never got that latter,’ she said. ‘I always thought my ol’ lady stole it. Well I wasn’t gonna stay no place where I couldn’t get nowhere or make something of myself, an’ where they stole your letters. I ast her if she stole it, too, an’ she says no. So I married Curley.

Curley’s wife lay with a half-covering of yellow hay. And the meanness and the plannings and the discontent and the ache for attention were all gone from her face. She was very pretty and simple, and her face was sweet and young. Now her rouged cheeks and her reddened lips made her seem alive and sleeping very lightly.

Now Candy spoke his greatest fear. ‘You an’ me can get that little place, can’t we, George? You an’ me can go there an’ live nice, can’t we, George? Can’t we?’Before George answered, Candy dropped his head and looked down at the hay. He knew.

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Chapter Six

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A water snake glided smoothly up the pool, twisting its periscope head from side to side; and it swam the length of the pool and came to the legs of the motionless heron that stood in the shallows. A silent head and beak lanced down and plucked it out by the head, and the beak swallowed the little snake while its tail waved frantically.

And George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it close to the back of Lennie’s head. The hand shook violently, but his face set and his hand steadied. He pulled the trigger. The crash of the shot rolled up the hills and rolled down again. Lennie jarred, and then settled slowly forward to the sand, and he lay without quivering.George shivered and looked at the gun, and then he threw it from him, back up on the bank, near the pile of old ashes.

Slim said, ‘You hadda, George. I swear you hadda. Come on with me.’ He led George into the entrance of the trail and up toward the highway.Curley and Carlson looked after them. And Carlson said, ‘Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin’ them two guys?’

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