John Steinbeck’s classic, iconic and powerful 1937 drama.  The story follows George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers, as they move from place to place in California, searching for jobs during the Great Depression.  Labourers in California’s dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence.  For George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own.  When they land jobs on a ranch in the Salinas Valley, the fulfilment of their dream seems to be within their grasp.  But even George cannot guard Lennie from the provocations of a flirtatious woman, nor predict the consequences of Lennie’s unswerving obedience to the things George taught him.

The use of ‘mice’ in this context is taken from Robert Burns’ famous poem ‘To a Mouse’, in which he refers to a mouse whose nest was accidentally destroyed during ploughing.  The mouse was therefore a victim of accident and fate. A mouse of course is small and fragile and easily affected by nature (or a lumbering Scotsman). The famous line from the poem, ‘The best-laid plans of mice and men/gang oft agley’, equates the fate of men to the fate of something fragile and easily trampled, as happens in the play.