Of Mice and Men 1017with the boss, the wages, or the conditions at one
ranch, they can always pick up and move on to
the next. Their independence is a function of their
employable skills, their work ethic, and their status
as white males. Yet while George and Lennie have
the freedom to quit at any time or independently
choose their next destination and employment, they
do not even expect the freedom to work under fair
treatment for fair compensation, the freedom not to
be exploited, or the freedom inherent in any future
economic security. In reconfiguring the traditional
definition of freedom as it applies to California’s
migrant laborers in the 1930s, Steinbeck’s novel
prefigures the expanded conception of freedom
made famous by Franklin Roosevelt in his Janu-
ary 1941 “Four Freedoms” speech, in which, to the
constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech and
religion, he added two more: the freedom from
want and the freedom from fear.
Of Mice and Men addresses the first of these
soon-to-be-articulated concepts, freedom from
want, in at least two important ways. First, the nov-
el’s characters frequently raise the issue of economic
exploitation: They want the freedom to enjoy the
fruits of their labors. “I’d have my own little place,
an’ I’d be bringin’ in my own crops,” George dreams,
“ ’stead of doin’ all the work and not getting what
comes up outa the ground.” Candy, too, has little to
show for a lifetime of working California’s ranches
and farms: “I planted crops for damn near ever’body
in this state, but they wasn’t my crops, and when I
harvested ‘em, it wasn’t none of my harvest.” Stein-
beck’s novel also questions a conception of freedom
based solely on the market value of one’s labor.
Crooks and Candy, both of them older and partially
disabled, know they can continue working only as
long as they remain economically useful. Old Candy,
relegated by age and infirmity to cleaning the bunk-
house, can only await the day of his dismissal. He
clearly sees his own future when his aged dog is
euthanized by another ranch hand. “You see what
they done to my dog tonight? They say he wasn’t no
good to himself nor nobody else. When they can me
here I wisht somebody’d shoot me. But they won’t
do nothing like that. I won’t have no place to go, an’
I can’t get no more jobs.” George’s dream of a farm
they can own and collectively work quickly spreads
among the ranch’s outcasts, expressing their desire
to free themselves from hunger and homelessness.
Roosevelt’s call for a freedom from fear, for the
protection of all against the potential aggression of
the more powerful, is best illustrated in the novel
by the situation of Crooks, the black stable keeper.
A lifelong victim of segregation and social ostra-
cism, Crooks lives in constant fear of inadvertently
breaking society’s rigid taboos. When Curley’s wife
violates his space, he demands she leave. Scornfully
dismissing him, she reminds him of his vulnerability
and exposes his hidden fear. “Well, you keep your
place then, Nigger. I could get you strung up on a
tree so easy it ain’t even funny.” “Crooks,” Steinbeck
tells us, “had reduced himself to nothing. There was
no personality, ego—nothing to arouse either like or
dislike. He said, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and his voice was tone-
less.” Steinbeck’s clear reference to the increase in
Klan violence and the lynching of black Americans
in the 1930s is the strongest, though hardly the only,
reference to what Roosevelt would define as human-
ity’s right to live in freedom from fear. Curley, the
ranch owner’s son, is a tyrant who aggressively con-
fronts those under him, physically bullying Crooks,
Lennie, and even his own wife with impunity.
It is not Curley, however, but the physically
even more powerful Lennie who sets in motion the
novel’s tragic conclusion. It is Lennie’s freedom, his
“don’t know no rules,” that directly conflicts with
society’s need to protect its members. If Of Mice and
Men suggests our concept of freedom be more inclu-
sive of social justice, it remains rooted nevertheless
in personal responsibility.
Michael ZeitlerISoLatIon in Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck sets his short novel Of Mice and
Men in the fertile farmlands of California’s Sali-
nas Valley, on a ranch “a few miles south of Sole-
dad.” In Spanish, the town’s name, Soledad, means
solitude, implying both a physical isolation and a
psychological loneliness. Steinbeck incorporates all
of the word’s meanings into this story of migrant
field hands who harvest the nation’s crops in the
1930s, examining in the process the root causes of
modernity’s increased sense of isolation in the loss
of community. “Guys like us, that work on ranches,