Text-to-Text | Of Mice and Men and “Friendship in an Age of Economics”
John Steinbeck’spowerful novella Of Mice and Men explores themes of friendship, power, dreams, and the responsibility we have to look out for one another in a sometimes unkind world.
The characters at the heart of the story, George and Lennie, work against all odds to earn enough money to build their dream – to own a place of their own, with alfalfa and rabbits. Their friendship sets them apart from the other men in the world of the book and fuels their aspirations, until the book’s violent conclusion.
For thisText-to-Text, you will explore the role of true friendship in a world defined by transactional relationships. We pair the opening exchanges between George and Lennie with a piece from the New York Times’ philosophy blog, “Friendship in an Age of Economics.”
Background
In “Of Mice and Men,” when George and Lennie meet Slim, he asks them about their relationship. This exchange follows:
“You guys travel around together?” His tone was friendly. It invited confidence without demanding it.
“Sure,” said George. “We kinda look after each other.” He indicated Lennie with his thumb. “He ain’t bright. Hell of a good worker, though. Hell of a nice fella, but he ain’t bright. I’ve knew him for a long time.”
Slim looked through George and beyond him. “Ain’t many guys travel around together,” he mused. “I don’t know why. Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”
“It’s a lot nicer to go around with a guy you know,” said George.
In this scene, Steinbeck hints at the significance of true friendship in a harsh world. The theme of friendship in the story plays out, not only between George and Lennie, but also between Candy and his dog, as well as through the isolation of characters like Crooks, who is black, and Curley’s wife, who is female and not even significant enough to warrant her own name. In Chapter 5, these characters are brought together and — briefly — can imagine a brighter future. Friendship is not only “nicer,” it’s vital.
Our world is not the same as the 1930s ranch Steinbeck imagines, but we are often similarly isolated — by geography, difference, or even technology. What does friendship look like now? Why is it important?
Key Question:What is “true friendship” and how does our world today challenge it?
Text 1: Excerpt from“Friendship in an Age of Economics”by Todd May, July 4, 2010:
Aristotle thought that there were three types of friendship: those of pleasure, those of usefulness, and true friendship. In friendships of pleasure, “it is not for their character that men love ready-witted people, but because they find them pleasant.” In the latter, “those who love each other for their utility do not love each other for themselves but in virtue of some good which they get from each other.” For him, the first is characteristic of the young, who are focused on momentary enjoyment, while the second is often the province of the old, who need assistance to cope with their frailty. What the rise of recent public rhetoric and practice has accomplished is to cast the first two in economic terms while forgetting about the third.
In our lives, however, few of us have entirely forgotten about the third — true friendship. We may not define it as Aristotle did — friendship among the already virtuous — but we live it in our own way nonetheless. Our close friendships stand as a challenge to the tenor of our times.
Conversely, our times challenge those relationships. This is why we must reflect on friendship; so that it doesn’t slip away from us under the pressure of a dominant economic discourse. We are all, and always, creatures of our time. In the case of friendship, we must push back against that time if we are to sustain what, for many of us, are among the most important elements of our lives. It is those elements that allow us to sit by the bedside of a friend: not because we know it is worth it, but because the question of worth does not even arise.
There is much that might be said about friendships. They allow us to see ourselves from the perspective of another. They open up new interests or deepen current ones. They offer us support during difficult periods in our lives. The aspect of friendship that I would like to focus on is its non-economic character. Although we benefit from our close friendships, these friendships are not a matter of calculable gain and loss. While we draw pleasure from them, they are not a matter solely of consuming pleasure. And while the time we spend with our friends and the favors we do for them are often reciprocated in an informal way, we do not spend that time or offer those favors in view of the reciprocation that might ensue.
Friendships follow a rhythm that is distinct from that of either consumer or entrepreneurial relationships. This is at once their deepest and most fragile characteristic. Consumer pleasures are transient. They engulf us for a short period and then they fade, like a drug. That is why they often need to be renewed periodically. Entrepreneurship, when successful, leads to the victory of personal gain. We cultivate a colleague in the field or a contact outside of it in the hope that it will advance our career or enhance our status. When it does, we feel a sense of personal success. In both cases, there is the enjoyment of what comes to us through the medium of other human beings.
Friendships worthy of the name are different. Their rhythm lies not in what they bring to us, but rather in what we immerse ourselves in. To be a friend is to step into the stream of another’s life. It is, while not neglecting my own life, to take pleasure in another’s pleasure, and to share their pain as partly my own. The borders of my life, while not entirely erased, become less clear than they might be. Rather than the rhythm of pleasure followed by emptiness, or that of investment and then profit, friendships follow a rhythm that is at once subtler and more persistent. This rhythm is subtler because it often (although not always) lacks the mark of a consumed pleasure or a successful investment. But even so, it remains there, part of the ground of our lives that lies both within us and without.
We might say of friendships that they are a matter not of diversion or of return but of meaning. They render us vulnerable, and in doing so they add dimensions of significance to our lives that can only arise from being, in each case, friends with this or that particular individual, a party to this or that particular life.
It is precisely this non-economic character that is threatened in a society in which each of us is thrown upon his or her resources and offered only the bywords of ownership, shopping, competition, and growth. It is threatened when we are encouraged to look upon those around us as the stuff of our current enjoyment or our future advantage. It is threatened when we are led to believe that friendships without a recognizable gain are, in the economic sense, irrational. Friendships are not without why, perhaps, but they are certainly without that particular why.
Text 2:Excerpt from Chapter 1 ofOf Mice and Men:
“If you don’ want me I can go off in the hills an’ find a cave. I can go away any time.”
“No — look! I was jus’ foolin’, Lennie. ‘Cause I want you to stay with me. Trouble with mice is you always kill ‘em.” He paused. “Tell you what I’ll do, Lennie. First chance I get I’ll give you a pup. Maybe you wouldn’t kill it. That’d be better than mice. And you could pet it harder.”
Lennie avoided the bait. He had sensed his advantage. “If you don’t want me, you only jus’ got to say so, and I’ll go off in those hills right there — right up in those hills and live by myself. An’ I won’t get no mice stole from me.”
George said, “I want you to stay with me, Lennie. Jesus Christ, somebody’d shoot you for a coyote if you was by yourself. No, you stay with me. Your Aunt Clara wouldn’t like you running off by yourself, even if she is dead.”
Lennie spoke craftily, “Tell me — like you done before.”
“Tell you what?”
“About the rabbits.”
George snapped, “You ain’t gonna put nothing over on me.”
Lennie pleaded, “Come on, George. Tell me. Please, George. Like you done before.”
“You get a kick outa that, don’t you? Awright, I’ll tell you, and then we’ll eat our supper….”
George’s voice became deeper. He repeated his words rhythmically as though he had said them many times before. “Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no fambly. They don’t belong no place. They come to a ranch an’ work up a stake and then they go into town and blow their stake, and the first thing you know they’re poundin’ their tail on some other ranch. They ain’t got nothing to look ahead to.”
Lennie was delighted. “That’s it — that’s it. Now tell how it is with us.”
George went on. “With us it ain’t like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us. We don’t have to sit in no bar room blowin’ in our jack jus’ because we got no place else to go. If them other guys gets in jail they can rot for all anybody gives a damn. But not us.”
Lennie broke in. “But not us! An’ why? Because… because I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that’s why.” He laughed delightedly. “Go on now, George!”
For Writing or Discussion:
1. How would you describe the relationship between George and Lennie in this excerpt?
2. Which of Aristotle’s three kinds of friendships would you say describes theirs? Why?
3. How does the time we live in threaten the third, and most precious, kind of friendship, according to Text 1? Why is it important to cultivate such friendships?
4. Discuss this statement in relation to George and Lennie: “They render us vulnerable, and in doing so they add dimensions of significance to our lives that can only arise from being, in each case, friends with this or that particular individual, a party to this or that particular life.” How does their friendship render each vulnerable? How does it add significance, good or bad, to each of their lives?
5. On the ranch in Steinbeck’s novella, which could be described as “a world often ruled by the dollar and what it can buy,” how exactly does “friendship, like love, opens other vistas”? What is the relationship between friendship and dreams?
Going Further:
Friendship in Your Life
In a world in which “friending” and “unfriending” have become verbs, use Aristotle as a lens through which to think deeply about your own friendships. Which of your friends are “for pleasure”? Which are for “usefulness”? Who do you consider to be your true friends? How did they come to be your true friends? Why are they important in your life? How doestechnology affect these relationships? What have these relationships taught you about the nature of friendship?
George and Lennie: The First Bromance
The theme of friendship in Of Mice and Men is echoed in what Times reporter Sarah Lyall calls the “bromance”between James Franco and Chris O’Dowd, who are preparing to take the leads in the current incarnation of the novel on Broadway.
Is a friendship between men different enough from other kinds of friendship to warrant its ownbuzzword?And why is this theme omnipresent in our culture now? How are male friendships different from those between girls and women? What about between people of different genders? Can boys and girls be “just friends”? Why are same-sex friendships important?
Recognizing Resilience
Of Mice and Men is a story of resilience in the face of sometimes heart-wrenching challenges. Friendship is part of what motivates George and Lennie to persevere. What does it mean to be resilient? Where does resiliency come from? How does George and Lennie’s friendship aid their resiliency?
Though you are not living through the same circumstances as Steinbeck’s characters, teenage life is full of stressors. What helps you when difficulties strike? How can you cultivate resilience in your life?
Of Mice and Men in the News
As George points out to Slim, Lennie is not too bright, but he’s a “nice fella”. The character of Lennie is based on areal manwith whom John Steinbeck worked alongside on a ranch, and who did, in fact, kill someone — a ranch foreman, not a woman. That man was placed in a mental hospital.
In 2012, Marvin Wilson, a mentally disabled man with an I.Q. of 61, was executed in Texas for a fatal shooting. Incovering the execution, reporter Robert Mackey referred to a 2004 ruling that established precedent for the execution. During it, a state court judge invoked Of Mice and Men, and Lennie specifically, in arguing that it would be impossible to define the point at which a mentally disabled person should not face execution for a crime.
Thomas Steinbeck, the author’s son, released a statement before the execution, condemning the act and saying, “Prior to reading about Mr. Wilson’s case, I had no idea that the great state of Texas would use a fictional character that my father created to make a point about human loyalty and dedication, i.e., Lennie Small from Of Mice and Men, as a benchmark to identify whether defendants with intellectual disability should live or die.”
How do the issues in this case echo those in the novella? Besides the obvious parallels, consider the roles of race and human responsibility. Do you think people with mental disabilities should face the death penalty? How do judges decide who should and who shouldn’t die? Is what George does in the end, acting as jury, judge, and executioner, the right thing to do?