I was told the poem ‘To a Mouse’ inspired John Steinbeck to write the novel ‘Mice and Men.’ I tried to make a connection between the novel and the poem. Most people just looking at the title would immediately think thats where John Steinbeck got the idea of Lenny always having a mouse. I thought there must be more than that. When I first looked at this poem I couldn’t see a big obvious connection. All I thought was John Steinbeck may have gotten some ideas from the poem such as, Lenny wants to be nice to the mouse and tries to help it, but it doesn’t always end that way. Or when George and Lenny go to work, in my opinion they are the mice. When George, Lenny and other workers go to work, its like Curley is the human and all the others are the mice.
In stanza one and two, I see Curley as the farmer and the workers as the mouse. Curley isn’t really going to hurt them unless they do something to him first, (or if he believes they’ve done something to him first.) In stanza three its like they can work and get food. That’s all I could see at first, but then in the 7th and 8th stanza I could see a really big connection.
In stanza seven the man says:
But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Basically its saying, ‘you are not alone, what we plan doesn’t happen and leaves us in pain.’ To me, I think that is almost identical to the novel. George and Lenny have this plan of buying their own place one day and having their own farm but in the end, it doesn’t happen. George is just left.
They are all afraid of Curley and in the last line of the poem the man who found the mouse says:
Still thou are blest, compared wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear
To really summarize the last paragraph the man is basically saying, ‘You are still lucky compared to me. Its a tough day your having, but I have to remember this.’ That last paragraph reminds me of when Curley’s wife dies and he gets really mad and he goes after Lenny. The way I see it is, Lenny is the mouse and George is the farmer. George doesn’t want Lennie to get hurt really badly so George goes and shoots him. Its like George should be saying, “You are still lucky compared to me. Its a tough day your having but I have to remember this.”
I think John Steinbeck probably read the poem before writing the novel.
