Violence and Innocence in a Fallen World

The Curse of Cain in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men

Perhaps I should begin by saying that I struggle with John Steinbeck. In particular, I struggle with Steinback’s articulation of his purpose in writing. He writes in Log from the Sea of Cortez,

It is a strange thing that most of the feeling we call religious, most of the mystical outcrying which is one of the most prized and used and desired reactions of our species, is really the understanding and the attempt to say that man is related to the whole thing, related inextricably to all reality, known and unknowable. That is why it is ridiculous to look for final causes in the crab or in man or in the universe. Non-teleological thinking concerns itself with what is, not what should be or could be or might be.

At the risk of getting too distracted from my primary point, I’ll just say that this is quite funny to me (and perhaps to you, if you’ve also read East of Eden, Of Mice and Men, or The Grapes of Wrath). Steinbeck seems to have produced some of the greatest works of American literature—indeed American mythology—quite accidentally.

Perhaps that’s flippant, but the fact remains that Steinbeck’s writing is not, actually, non-teleological. His novels are, in fact, interested in what ought to be, nor merely in what is.

Particularly, Steinbeck loves invoking Biblical literature to ask that question, what ought to be?

His interest in the story of Cain and Abel is more directly explored in his later novel East of Eden, but the roots of his consideration of it are evident in his 1937 Of Mice and Men. I have a lot of thoughts on Of Mice and Men and the conclusions Steinbeck reaches about the question of what ought to be. I don’t necessarily agree with him, but his meditation on the question of what, precisely, innocence and guilt are is at the very least intriguing.

Of Cain and Abel

Aesthetically, Steinbeck imitates the brotherly relationship of the Biblical twins; George Milton and Lennie Small are opposites physically as Cain and Abel fill opposite roles—Cain is a shepherd, Abel a farmer. George, as Steinbeck describes him in the first chapter of the novel, is “small and quick,” while Lennie is “huge…with wide, sloping shoulders.”¹ Yet there is not a strict dichotomy of good and evil between the two men—Lennie’s strength leads him to horrific violence, and George’s murder of his companion is not, as Cain’s is, rooted in jealousy. Rather, Steinbeck, in appropriating the framework of the Cain and Abel story, asks his reader to reconsider both morality and violence as they exist in a fallen world.

Whereas in the Biblical story there is a dichotomy between Cain’s guilt over murdering his brother and Abel’s innocence, here the reader is forced to question what, the natures of innocence and guilt in the first place. Innocence, here, does not equal morality. Marilyn McEntyre asks in her article “Of Mice and Men: A Story of Innocence Regained, “What if Abel’s gentleness were in fact weakness of mind or body?” (189).

Lennie is indeed innocent in that he lacks knowledge of evil, honest in that he does not intend to hurt anyone—not even the mice that he crushes out of love. Yet the fact remains that he causes great harm in spite of—or perhaps even because of—these characteristics. There also remains the burden of fixing those things he damages, and this falls to George, not Lennie. Their relationship is largely that of a parent and a child. Scripture exhorts us to “become like little children” (Matt. 18:3), but as McEntyre points out, “the difference between becoming like a child and remaining like one is vast. The first is an apotheosis of wisdom; the second either an infirmity or an abdication.”² Thus, in Lennie Steinbeck presents “the relationship between innocence and vacuity,” while in George that between “cruelty and kindness” (191). Lennie’s apparent innocence does not absolve him of all responsibility for his actions, but he is also not mentally capable of taking that responsibility on himself; that is where George comes in. George describes their relationship in the first chapter:

God a’mighty, if I was alone I could live so easy. No mess at all, and when the end of the month come I could take my fifty bucks and go into town and get whatever I want…I could do all that every damn month…And whatta I got…I got you! You can’t keep a job and you lose me ever’ job I get. Jus’ keep me shovin’ all over the country all the time. An’ that ain’t the worst. You get in trouble. You do bad things and I got to get you out.(804, italics added)

George does not specify here what it is, exactly, which tethers him to Lennie. He is certainly correct that his life would be objectively easier were it not for Lennie’s continual disrupting of things—would be easier without the burden of responsibility. Yet George aggressively rejects the prospect of separating from his travelling companion, and he proceeds to repeatedly tell Lennie that he wants him to stay with him. His obligation to Lennie is not one of filial piety but the duty of friendship and brotherhood.

My brother’s keeper

George marks a distinction between the state of his life—centered on his friendship with Lennie—and others’ lives, commenting that “Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don’t belong no place…They ain’t got nothing to look ahead to” (806).

He positions this sort of man against Lennie and himself, and Lennie quotes back to him the often-repeated lines, “But not us! An’ why? Because… because I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that’s why” (807). They define themselves—and each other—by their relationship.

Steinbeck’s novel begins, then, by answering Cain’s indignant query, “am I my brother’s keeper?”

Evidently, George and Lennie seem to think that they are responsible for each other. George, despite clearly being intellectually—and arguably, morally, given Lennie’s inability to comprehend situational ethics—more advanced than his companion, defines himself from the outset of the novel as Lennie’s keeper. George is literally introduced as he is leading Lennie down “a path through the willows and among the sycamores”; they walk “in single file down the path,” and George is in front of Lennie (797). Lennie is designated, in these first pages, as “the follower,” whose opposite must therefore be the leader (798).

Steinbeck, in drawing parallel lines defining his two characters, designates them clearly as opposites. Indeed, that he defines these men relationally from the outset is significant; one cannot be a follower without another to lead, nor can one lead without one to follow. Thus, the qualities the reader first comes to associate with these men frame them as linked together.

George’s first line of dialogue—“Lennie!... Lennie, for God’ sakes don’t drink so much” (798)—also points to an affirmative answer to Cain’s question. George’s first words define him as an authority over Lennie, one who is devoted to informing him of potential danger and defending him not only from external dangers but from himself.

The curse of Cain

In embracing relationality as their defining characteristic, George and Lennie position themselves against the horrors of loneliness, a common tragedy in the world they live in.

As William Goldhurst³ points out, the life of the migrant worker as outlined by Steinbeck here echoes the curse of Cain as delineated by God in Genesis 4: “When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. A fugitive and a vagabond you shall be on the earth” (Gen. 4:12).

Cain says that his “punishment is greater than [he] can bear” (Gen. 4:13).The Hebrew phrase from which this is translated reads גָּדוֹל עֲוֺנִי, מִנְּשֹׂא, and there is some ambiguity in this phrasing, particularly the words translated above as “punishment” and “bear,” for the former may also be translated “iniquity,” and the latter “forgive.”⁴

In their analysis of the Biblical passage, Lee and Harper pose the question, “Does Cain confess ‘my iniquity is greater than can be forgiven’ or does he complain ‘my punishment is greater than can be born’?”⁵

Regardless of translation, however, this verse reaffirms the primacy of relationship for the human person—either it states that murder, which extinguishes relationship, is too great a sin to be forgiven, or it bemoans the punishment of wandering because it cuts off the wanderer from society.

Both translations mourn a lack of relationality. Indeed, Cain’s punishment violates the initial condition of man in the Garden, wherein he exists in relationship, but so does his crime, which rends his brother from him.

Thus George, in saying that his life would be easier if he were alone, admits to himself and to Lennie that financial unease and instability is, in fact, easier to bear than loneliness and its effects.

Goldhurst proposes that in treating George and Lennie’s relationship in this way, Steinbeck seeks to answer the question, “is man meant to make his way alone or accompanied?” (56). By George’s admission even in just the first chapter, the answer to that question appears obvious—George, despite having full command of his rational faculties and recognizing that, in many ways, his life would be simpler if he and Lennie split up, chooses to protect, defend, and love Lennie as his brother every time.

Yet the reader must then ask what this brotherhood looks like in a fallen world, wherein the innocent Lennie is also destructive and basely violent.

Violence and meanness

There is, for George, a distinction between being violent and being mean. The first time George uses the word “mean” is when he tells Lennie that he is not taking the mouse, which Lennie likes to pet but accidentally killed, away “jus’ for meanness” and clarifies that the mouse “ain’t fresh” (803). Later in the same scene, George’s admission that he has “been mean” (805) is not prompted by a physical altercation but an emotional one; George has hurt Lennie by implying that he might be better off without Lennie to look after.

The guilt of a “mean” act weighs more upon George than any guilt associated with a violent one. He says later regarding Curley, “I don’t like mean little guys” (816) but explains his affection for Lennie saying that Lennie “ain’t mean” (827). It is meanness, not violence, which George perceives as rightfully guilt inducing.

He worries after telling Lennie that he might be better off on his own that “I been mean, ain’t I?” (805) and seeks to make it up to him, and he comments later to Slim, “I seen guys that go around on the ranches alone. That ain’t no good. They don’t have no fun. After a long time they get mean” (827). Slim and George agree wholeheartedly on the fact that Lennie “ain’t mean,” even if he is violent and dumb (827).

George, conversely, admits to both violence and meanness on various occasions, and the reader is left to consider whether his murder of Lennie is merely violent and morally excusable within George’s moral framework, or if it is mean; the former appears within the context of the work to be morally permissible in a fallen world, while the latter remains unacceptable.

What George considers “mean” appears to be that which causes emotional rather than—or in addition to—physical distress. Slim corroborates this when he responds to George’s comment that loneliness breeds meanness; “Yeah, they get mean… They get so they don’t want to talk to nobody” (827).

Meanness stems from a lack of relationality, perhaps even a lack of empathy. George wounds Lennie and calls himself mean when he fails to respond to his behavior empathetically. George and Lennie explicitly differentiate themselves from other migrant workers because of their unique relationship—this prevents them from being “mean,” and their battle against meanness—and by extension loneliness—necessitates the maintenance of their relationship above selfish desires.

Curley and his wife provide an interesting set of character foils for George and Lennie. Curley, too, is apophatically defined—his wife says that he “ain’t a nice fella” (863)—just as Slim and George agree that Lennie “ain’t mean” (827)—and the two are never seen together onstage (863). Curley’s wife repeatedly enters scenes with the words “I’m lookin’ for Curley” or some variant (819), while Curley is continually looking for his wife. The newlyweds are—quite literally—never on the same page, and the other characters repeatedly comment that Curley’s wife has “the eye” (817). Both Curley and his wife are, according to George and to Steinbeck’s narration, mean.

George is very clear that an act can be violent without being mean. When Lennie kills Curley’s wife, he comments, “Lennie never done it in meanness… all the time he done bad things, but he never done one of ‘em mean,” and he says that he “ain’t gonna let ‘em hurt Lennie” (868). The implication here is that society’s measure of guilt is rooted in violence, but the moral measure of guilt should be founded on meanness and niceness.

His argument for the lack of meanness inherent in Lennie’s actions provides the framework with which Steinbeck invites his reader to evaluate George’s own murder of his friend.

Lennie, too, asserts a lack of meanness on George’s part, saying that “he’s nice to me. He ain’t gonna be mean,” and the two men echo the conversation that began the novel (874). Lennie worries that George will leave him because he has done a “bad thing”; here the “bad thing” is the murder of Curley’s wife, while the first chapter features the accidental killing of a mouse (874). Much of the dialogue here is identical to that initial scene, and it is clear that even within the world of the novel the two men have walked through the same script many times. Lennie anticipates George’s responses—he even begins to fill in the blanks for him, saying “like [George] always done before, ‘If I di’n’t have you I’d take my fifty bucks—” but George cuts him off (874-875).

At Lennie’s request, George tells him about the difference between the two of them and the rest of the world, and the difference is that they have each other. The first iteration of this conversation back in chapter one conveys the affection the two companions have for each other—George deeply regrets anything he might say that would hurt Lennie’s feelings—but here George’s genuine brotherly love for Lennie is even more palpable, so much so that his feelings transcend the rehearsed words and make them fall flat between them.

Silence and relationality

There is a lot of silence between the words this time around. Steinbeck inserts little clauses regarding George’s silence: “George said quietly,” “George was silent,” “George said, and he fell silent again,” “George turned his head and listened,” “He stopped,” “George was quiet for a moment,” and variants appear consistently throughout the few pages dealing with George’s killing of Lennie. His responses become shorter—monosyllabic “no’s” pepper the dialogue, especially noticeable given that Steinbeck has given his reader versions of this conversation before.

George’s descent into silence calls to mind Slim’s comment that mean people “get so they don’t want to talk to nobody,” and this raises the question of whether it is mean people who lack adequate relationality or people who lack relationality who become mean (827).

George sinks into silence and out of the state of relationship which protects him from the worst fate—meanness and loneliness. Slim sites not talking to people as a sign of meanness, and here George’s quiet points to his future without Lennie. Yet the murder itself is not framed as a vicious or mean act, but as a tragic necessity.

Paradise lost and regained

The framing indicates that George, rather than doing a mean thing, is doing a kind thing. He lovingly tells Lennie the story of the rabbits and reassures him of his affection repeatedly. Indeed, his killing of Lennie is in effect to protect Lennie from the meanness of other men who may not understand him, and in that sense it is more tragic for George to lose the defining relationship of his life and consign himself to Cain’s punishment of wandering alone than it is for Lennie to die happy, secure in the relationship which has sustained him all the while. Lennie is not in a state of emotional distress at the moment of his death—George has separated violence and meanness.

George has already answered Cain’s question “am I my brother’s keeper?” in the affirmative, and the framing of his murder of Lennie as more tragically inevitable than morally corrupt suggests congruity between the “keeping” of one’s brother and George’s actions. Indeed, George seems to think here that to be his brother’s keeper necessitates that he kill Lennie in order to protect him from the meanness of the world.

In a fallen world, men still seem to recognize those things which set them apart and mark them with the sign of hope—relationality and niceness chief among them.

Yet these things are not sustainable, or so Steinbeck implies, in the world as it exists post-Eden. Indeed, if George’s apparent mercy killing is not, in fact, mean—and therefore condemning—then it does lies in direct conflict with the other source of hope in the novel, namely the dream of the farm.

The description of George and Lennie’s dream for a farm is repeated three times throughout the novel. The details surrounding their pastoral dream are nothing short of Edenic, and their desires reflect the Adamic mission to cultivate the land:

“O.K. Someday - we’re gonna get the jack together and we’re gonna have a little house and a couple of acres an’ a cow and some pigs and -"
"An’ live off the fatta the lan’," Lennie shouted. "An’ have rabbits. Go on, George! Tell about what we’re gonna have in the garden and about the rabbits in the cages and about the rain in the winter and the stove, and how thick the cream is an’ the milk like you can hardly cut it. Tell about that, George."
"Why’n’t you do it yourself? You know all of it."
"No... you tell it. It ain’t the same if I tell it. Go on... George. How I get to tend the rabbits."
"Well," said George, "we’ll have a big vegetable patch and a rabbit hutch and chickens. And when it rains in the winter, we’ll just say the hell with goin’ to work, and we’ll build up a fire in the stove and set around it an’ listen to the rain comin’ down on the roof.” (807)

The riches they anticipate in the familiar story reflect the promise of paradise in the land of Eden, as well as the land of Canaan later in Genesis. The repeated clause “live off the fatta the land” reoccurs throughout the novel, pointing to the Edenic state of peace and prosperity in the Garden. Yet it is impossible to rewind time and go back to a prelapsarian Eden from a fallen and corrupted world. Even George’s last name, Milton, points to the fact that paradise is already lost.

The two men, either admirably or foolishly, are clinging to a dream which is incompatible with their reality. In a definitive way, Lennie’s uncontrollable violence—not even meanness, merely violence—renders the dream impossible, and George shooting Lennie is the final seal. Thus, George’s action reads as a sacrifice of the potential for paradise and consigns him to a life of lonely wandering and growing meanness as a result of a lack of relationality, which we see emerging in his growing silence.

More than a specific one-to-one allegory where George is Cain and Lennie Abel, Steinbeck’s Biblically inspired novel poses nuanced questions about the essence of the story—and about human nature. The final moments of the novel are shrouded in tragedy.

Slim finds George and a dead Lennie in the grove near the willows, and God’s question posed to Cain hangs between them: “What have you done?”—in Hebrew, מַה-זֹּאת עָשִׂיתָ 

This clause appears throughout Genesis and insinuates the guilt of the questioned party. It appears in the story of Adam and Eve just after the Fall, Abraham when confronted by Pharaoh, Jacob upon discovering that Laban has given him Leah instead of Rachel, and Joseph when he at last confronts his brothers in Egypt (Lee and Harper). It is regularly met not by an admission of guilt but by silence—as with Abraham—or denial—as with Cain.

George, however, offers a simple confession; “I just done it” (877).

Semantically, the repetition of the מַה-זֹּאת עָשִׂיתָ phrase⁶ demands an echo of its first usage in Genesis. Lee and Harper state that the phrase “invites emulation” (182), and this is true on a semantic, narrative, and eschatological level.

Each time it is uttered in the face of a wrongdoing is a resurrection of that moment in the Garden when Adam and Eve were aware of their sin and were ashamed, and until the sons of Jacob break the trend, every sinner in Genesis—when given a chance to seek forgiveness—meets God’s words with silence, denial, or blame shifting.

This response pattern is not only a failure to respond to God’s question time and time again, but it is a direct rejection of what, in this thematic tracing of Genesis, is a divine action—speech. When invited to partake in this action, sinners turn aside—they forfeit, as it were, their birthright. Speech is a creative act in that it brings something—words—into existence, and in that it establishes ties and relationships with various other parties.

When a sinner is asked “what is this that you’ve done,” and their response is silence, they reject a proffered relationship of reconciliation. Yet George, when confronted with the fallout of his violent act, despite his silence in the preceding pages detailing the murder, is not silent.

George admits not only that he “done it,” but implicitly admits his remorse as well. He has sacrificed—as he understands it, for the sake of his friend—his dream of an Edenic future. In his own way and in accordance with his understanding of morality, he has loved Lennie, and George’s story ends—unlike Cain’s—with hope, for he walks off not alone but with Slim by his side; a possibility for community remains in the wake of his confession.

1. John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men, in John Steinbeck Novels and Stories 1932-1937, 798.

2. Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, “Of Mice and Men: A Story of Innocence Regained,” in The Essential Criticism of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, edited by Michael J. Meyer. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, 2009, 189.

3. William Goldhurst, “John Steinbeck’s Parable of the Curse of Cain.” In The Essential Criticism of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, edited by Michael J. Meyer. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, 2009.

4. As a funny aside, it was actually John Steinbeck, in a roundabout way, who inspired me to study Hebrew in the first place. That’s perhaps a topic for another day.

5. Alex C.H. Lee and G. Geoffery Harper. “Dodging the Question? The Rhetorical Function of the מַה-זֹּאת עָשִׂיתָ Formula in the Book of Genesis.” Tyndale Bulletin 70.2 (2019): 161-183, 168.

6. Substack is having a really hard time formatting Hebrew phrases, particularly on mobile, so if this one looks weird, my apologies!