The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
— Robert Burns

The urge to control other’s lives and restrict what they read seems to be just below the surface, always ready to raise its ugly head. People may deny that they want to censor books and mouth platitudes about “appropriate reading material,” but the end results are challenges to books in schools and libraries. This being the last day of Banned Books Week (September 23-30, 2000), the following members of Epinions are joining me in writing reviews of books that are on the American Library Association’s list “The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–1999”:

frazzledspice, Penguinlady, janesbit1, jennifer_gibbons, eric_james, elizajane, jgibson2, susanwhipple, dandj, foxfroggy, kinganamort, Elorraine, wildvirgogirl, teskue, dlbrantley, kurt_messick, and jenninca


Who among us hasn’t read Of Mice and Men? It started out as a children’s fable but was almost entirely re-written after Steinbeck’s dog tore the working manuscript to shreds. I wonder if Steinbeck told his literary agent that his dog ate his homework. This perennial standard of middle-school and junior high years has long since entered American mythology. Christ-like George and child-like Lennie have a rather strange and uneven friendship, but at least they have a friendship. All of the other characters in Of Mice and Men are painfully alone in the world. Curley is the quintessential bully, always ready to pick on those weaker than him, but a coward in the final analysis. Curley’s wife (who is never given a name) is the only woman in the book. She is portrayed as mean and manipulative but Steinbeck clearly sympathizes with her; her abused and pathetic background lead a reader to pity rather than hate her. Carlson is uniformly insensitive. He not only fails to empathize with anyone else but seems to be unaware that there is such a thing as empathy. He’s brutal and destructive with no redeeming qualities. Alone among all these one-dimensional people, Slim the mule driver stands out as almost too perfect. He’s introduced in the novella as an heroic character:

“A tall man stood in the doorway. He held a crushed Stetson hat under his arm while he combed his long, black, damp hair straight back. Like the others he wore blue jeans and a short denim jacket. When he had finished combing his hair he moved into the room, and he moved with a majesty only achieved by royalty and master craftsmen. He was a jerkline skinner, the prince of the ranch, capable of driving ten, sixteen, or even twenty mules with a single line to the leaders. He was capable of killing a fly on the wheeler’s butt with a bull whip without touching the mule. There was a gravity in his manner and a quiet so profound that all talk stopped when he spoke. His authority was so great that his word was taken on any subject, be it politics or love. This was Slim, the jerkline skinner. His hatchet face was ageless. He might have been thirty-five or fifty. His ear heard more than was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought. His hands, large and lean, were as delicate in their action as those of a temple dancer.”

Of Mice and Men (number 6 on the list of 100 most challenged and banned books) can be read on several levels. George and Lennie’s dream of obtaining a little land (An’ live off the fatta the lan’) and their need for each other’s companionship can be seen as an Arthurian grail quest. The struggle of poor people to obtain a bit of dignity in society reflects Steinbeck’s concern for the downtrodden which would later form the core of The Grapes of Wrath. Of Mice and Men is also a spiritual parable of the struggle between good and evil and a re-working of the story of Cain and Abel that Steinbeck would return to in East of Eden. There’s a level of lyricism not to be found in most fiction read at the middle-school and junior high levels: “As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.”

Great literature like Of Mice and Men rises above the “safe” and mundane “functional” reading to which all too many adults would restrict kids. Literature teaches much more than the mechanics of reading, it helps to stimulate critical thinking skills.

The ALA’s Banned Books Week page is at
http://www.ala.org/bbooks/

The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–1999 can be found at
http://www.ala.org/alaorg/oif/top100bannedbooks.html

I wasn’t able to find information pertaining to why Of Mice and Men ranked sixth in 1990–1999 on the Banned Books listing but I did find a 1986 listing of some earlier challenges to Of Mice and Men:
Considered "dangerous" because of its profanity and "vulgar language."
Banned in Syracuse, Indiana, 1974;
Oil City, Pennsylvania, 1977;
Grand Blanc, Michigan, 1979;
Continental, Ohio, 1980
Skyline High School, Scottsboro, Alabama, 1983.
Challenged by Greenville, South Carolina, 1977;
Vernon-Verona-Sherill, New York, School District, 1980;
St. David, Arizona, 1981;
Telly City, Indiana, 1982;
Knoxville, Tennessee, School Board, 1984.



Recommended: Yes