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Of Mice and Men is a brief, intense novel. Written to be easily transferred to the stage, it has a play-like sense of drama, as the action builds to the tragic death of Curley's wife and concludes with the wrenching heartbreak of the final scene. Steinbeck's novel is intensely sentimental in its portrayal of Lennie, the simple-minded giant, and George, his friend and protector who is forced to kill him. In fact, its sentimentality has …

…free will seems illusory. This lack of control over their lives forces them to locate their happiness elsewhere--in Crooks' childhood, or Curley's wife's vision of Hollywood stardom, or George and Lennie's Eden-like dream of their own farm. The whole point of these visions is that they are not real, and Of Mice and Men is essentially the story of how George learns that hard lesson and comes to grip with a life of lost illusions.