The uncomfortable questions Steinbeck forces us to sit with.
I’m honestly still recovering from this story.
I picked this book up thinking it would just be a straightforward, old-school novel about two men and their little dream of owning land, and instead it left me sitting in my room, staring at the wall and holding on to my tummy like I’d just witnessed something I wasn’t ready for.
This book genuinely broke something inside me brutally, and with this strange kind of inevitability. And the moment I started digging deeper into what shaped this story, it all made a frightening sort of sense.
The world Steinbeck was writing in.
Steinbeck wrote it in 1937, right in the middle of the Great Depression, when people were wandering from ranch to ranch just to survive, clutching to tiny dreams because they were the only things keeping them emotionally afloat. Loneliness was basically the default setting of that time, work was unstable, dignity was optional, and human dreams cracked under pressure every day.
George and Lennie weren’t just characters; they were reflections of the real men Steinbeck watched — exhausted, hopeful, worn down, still trying. When you read the book with that history in mind, every moment suddenly feels heavier, sharper, inevitable.
And then there’s the whole banned-book drama.
It’s funny how a slim novel like this has been challenged so many times it could practically file for emotional damages. People have tried to ban it for racial slurs, profanity, the violent ending, the portrayal of disability, the “inappropriate” content — basically anything that made them uncomfortable. But honestly, banning this book now feels outdated.
Our generation doesn’t run from difficult topics; rather we poke at them, overthink them, have midnight talks about them. The criticisms — about racism, sexism, disability portrayal — are valid to discuss. But censoring the story doesn’t protect anyone; it just erases the very history the book is revealing. The world the novel describes was harsh, discriminatory, lonely, and unforgiving. Removing the book doesn’t change that; it just softens it into something unreal.
Did Lennie know what he was doing? (Spoilers in this section ⚠️)
What I kept circling back to — the part that hit me the hardest — was the question of Lennie’s actions. Did he know what he was doing? Was he dangerous? Was he innocent? The book doesn’t let you pick one side and escape.
Warning: Spoiler below ⚠️
Lennie is obsessed with soft things; he doesn’t understand danger or boundaries or how strong he actually is. His mind is childlike, his reactions instinctive. The incident in Weed started with him touching a girl’s dress because it was soft, and when she panicked, he panicked harder, and suddenly it looked like an assault. With Curley’s wife, it’s the exact same heartbreaking pattern. She lets him touch her hair because she’s lonely and starved for attention. He pets it, gets overwhelmed, she panics, he holds on too tight, and the whole thing spirals into a death he never intended.
It is violence. It is harm. It is a tragedy. But it is also painfully clear that Lennie has no intent, no sexual motives, no understanding of consequences.
Steinbeck forces us into this impossible emotional space where Lennie’s innocence and Curley’s wife’s suffering exist in the same moment, demanding to be acknowledged together. The absence of malice does not erase the presence of harm. And that, more than anything, is what ripped me apart.
You can’t call Lennie evil, but you can’t pretend Curley’s wife isn’t a victim. You can’t blame her, but you also can’t fully blame him. The tragedy is that no one in this story is protected, supported, or understood — and when you put vulnerable people in a brutal world, something terrible will eventually happen.
Sitting with a moral knot in my stomach. (Spoilers in this section ⚠️)
George’s decision… I don’t even have the emotional stamina to fully unpack that without tearing up again. It’s mercy and horror tied together in one impossible moment.
Warning: Spoiler below ⚠️
George kills Lennie with love — which is one of the most disturbing, painful contradictions I’ve ever encountered in literature. He does it to protect Lennie from a mob, from cruelty, from torture, from a world that was never built to keep someone like him safe. And yet, even as an act of mercy, it is still loss, still heartbreak, still a kind of betrayal wrapped in tenderness. You don’t walk away from that scene feeling resolved. You walk away feeling hollow.
Is the criticism of the book valid even today?
The thing is, even with all the controversy surrounding it, this book still matters today. Our generation is emotionally intelligent in a way older generations rarely give us credit for. We don’t need stories sanitized or watered down. We need stories that tell the truth — even when it’s harsh, even when it’s morally complicated, even when it demands uncomfortable conversations.
And Of Mice and Men does exactly that. It forces us to look at systems that fail people, at loneliness that crushes people, at dreams that both save and destroy people. It shows us what happens when society offers no safety net for the vulnerable. It shows us that tragedy isn’t always born from evil — sometimes it’s born from neglect, misunderstanding, and the emotional poverty of an entire era.
Why this book hurt so much?
Because behind the plot, behind the heartbreak, behind the violence, what really lingers is the loneliness. The kind that feels timeless. The kind that feels familiar. The kind that sneaks into your chest after you close the book and refuses to leave.
Of Mice and Men doesn’t comfort you; it confronts you. It doesn’t hold your hand; it holds up a mirror. And the reflection is messy, painful, unfair, and deeply human. I don’t think I’ll ever fully recover from this story — and honestly, I think that’s the power of stories like these: they don’t just make you feel; they make you remember what it means to care.
