Of Mice & Men (and Rabbits)

John Steinbeck wrote Of Mice & Men in 1937 using his characters to describe what life was like in the Great Depression years. The story is set in the Silinas Valley of California where Steinbeck grew up. Of Mice & Men is a short novel with a simple storyline but is masterly written so as to capture the reader’s attention from start to finish - it is recognized by all as an American classic.

Of Mice & Men deals with many social issues such as racism, lust, pain, alienation, pity, jealousy, egoism, and friendship. But the issue that interests us is the key part that rabbits play in the plot of this masterpiece. One of the main themes in the book is the desire for the American Dream - to have your own piece of land and be free to develop it. This is the dream of the protagonists, George and Lennie . The highlight of the dream these two share is the rabbits that will be tended by Lennie.

George Mitton is small but witty, whereas Lennie Small is very large and strong but with small brain capacity. They travel together as migrant workers. George started looking out for Lennie when Lennie’s Aunt Clara died. Although Of Mice & Men only covers a three-day period on a ranch in Salinas, through the dialogue of the various characters we learn how Lennie is always causing trouble wherever he goes, although he doesn’t mean to. Lennie is presented as having the personality of a small child, and thus his fascination with rabbits because everyone knows how captivated children are by cute domesticated rabbits. Lennie is obsessed with the joy of petting the soft coat of rabbits, something he had done once at a county fair. In the early section Of Mice & Men, Lennie has a mouse in his pocket whose hair he likes to stroke even after he has accidentally killed it. Later he is given a new-born puppy to care for but it isn’t long before he has accidentally killed it as well because he does not understand his own strength.

All through Of Mice & Men the one thing Lennie never forgets is his dream of tending the rabbits. In one scene George recounts the dream as follows:

“An’ rabbits“, Lennie said eagerly. “An’ I’d take care of ’em. Tell how I’d do that, George”.
     “Sure, you’d go in the alfalfa patch an’ you’d have a sack. You’d fill up the sack and bring it in an’ put it in the rabbit cages.”
     “They’d nibble an’ nibble”, said Lennie, “the way they do. I see em”.

But as the title of the book indicates their dream is never to be. (The title is taken from a Robert Burns poem "To A Mouse" about a field mouse’s world being destroyed by a plow “The best laid plans of mice and men”). This is the tone of Steinbeck’s Depression era books, melancholy and morose, describing the common man as lonely and hopeless in his struggle to survive, living only for the present with fanciful ideas about a future that will never come to pass.

But back to the rabbits. On the very first page rabbits are introduced, and on page two they are described as

     “On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray, sculptured stones”.

All through the story whenever George and Lennies’s dream is recounted, Lennie’s tending the rabbits is always the highlight. Then at the end of the book, after Lennie has accidentally broken the neck of the ranch owner’s daughter-in-law when she enticed him to stroke her soft hair, he is hiding out in the brush in a highly agitated state knowing he has done a bad thing and George will be so displeased. This is how John Steinbeck describes Lennie’s conscience:

     “…and from Lennie’s head there came a gigantic rabbit. It sat on its haunches in front of him, and it wagged its ears and crinkled its nose at him. And it spoke in Lennie’s voice …”.

The rabbit goes on to berate Lennie for being so ignorant, and Lennie cries back in his own defense because he does not want to lose the priviledge of tending the rabbits when the dream comes true. The conversation ends with Lennie calling out “George, George”, and just then George appears and comforts Lennie by telling him the story of the farm they are going to get some day, but this time it is told for the very last time.

Of Mice & Men is a strongly sad, pitiful story but brilliantly written and arranged. For years it was required reading in public high schools as an example of the rich symbolism to be found in an American classic. In the 1970’s and 1980’s the book was actually banned in some communities because of its rough language and raw portrayal of racism. The story has been made into a Hollywood movie three times, in 1940, 1981, and 1992.

So why did John Steinbeck put such emphasis on rabbits in Of Mice & Men? The answer, because rabbits played such a major role in American life during the Great Depression, especially in California. Even the U.S. Department of the Interior put out pamphlets encouraging the raising of rabbits for meat and a way to make extra money. In the 1940’s rabbit meat sales in California rivaled those of poultry sales. But America has seen many prosperous years since the Great Depression and the eating of domestic rabbits has declined dramatically. Today the trend is to breed rabbits as house pets, something our Rabbit World View web site is trying to champion.