Mice are those loves petting Lennie, simple-minded and force of nature who regularly shoves in more or less serious embarrassment which fortunately hit his friend Georges.
In lapre context of the Great Depression, the two men trying to make a living as a daily farm, wandering from farm to farm. They have nothing, if not the friendship they are doing and the crazy hope to buy a small farm. They work alongside other fragile existences: black back demolished, enclosed in its necessary loneliness; the boss's son, surly and jealous, whose wife is bored; the old man, too, dreaming of better days, accompanied by his dog declining.
The frightening impression of a tragic outcome will gradually assert between mice and men, in the destiny of the old dog and puppy with Lennie inherit. The work leaves no doubt about its outcome. Suggestions accumulate, respond to and amplify despite the precautions of actors in the drama. There will be no rescue last minute, no turnaround.
Then one clings to the dialogues full attention. On the need of the other, on the hopes that support the desire to live. One might fear the melodramatic, but the compactness of the novel, the total absence of frills, and its inevitable appearance make the switch on the side of the tale, the myth.