You can have a pup if you want to

George is honest with Slim and tells him why he´s with Lennie. It was a responsibility that George assumed when Lennie´s aunt died and he was helpless. Although George admits that ‘Lennie´s a God damn nuisance most of the time’ has got used to his company. Somehow they complement each other. What one doesn´t have, the other has. And then he tells Slim what happened at Weed.

What tenderness is lived in the scene in which a young labouring man, Whit, recognizes in one of those pup magazines an old ranch workmate who drove a cultivator and shows it to Slim who has a hard time admitting that a poor farmhand is able to write such a letter.

The following pages describe the way in which the labourers have to settle with the suffering of an old dog after convincing the owner of the animal; and being the writer a great friend of dogs I wonder if he ever had to face that situation and the bitterness with which he would write this moment.

I´m finding expressions that I like very much in this book, but I must also say that some things I don´t understand, as happens with the phrase that appears on page 58:

‘Curley´s got  yella-jackets in his drawers, but that´s all so far’.

I don't know exactly what 'got yella-jackets in his drawers' means, 'got yella-jackets in his drawers’... Just as I also had to devote a few minutes of online research to find out why 'in Susy´s house don´t let goo-goos in'.

Another character, Candy, makes an endearing proposal to George on pages 67 and 68. Is there anything more noble and elevated than having you your own home and owning your own work? George starts weighing Candy's offer and recommends that he not tell anyone.

The constant presence of the owner´s son´s wife is immersed in the atmosphere that runs through this entire chapter. On the other hand, it´s a natural thing that occurs in a space as described in the work, an isolated ranch in the countryside and a bedroom full of testosterone.

From my Borstal.

LDR

Of Mice and Men. John Steinbeck. Pocket Penguin Classic. London, 2006.