John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is a novel in which each of the characters has a dream, but they each do things that make it impossible for his or her dream to come true. Steinbeck=s idea for his novel comes from a translated in the poem "To a Mouse on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough." The line is "the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray." The fact that Steinbeck got his idea from this line of the poem is shown throughout the book by looking at what the various characters do in the book.

In the novel, there are two main characters, George and Lennie. Lennie is retarded and cannot take care of himself, so George has to take care of him. Other characters in the story are Candy, the old swamper, Slim, the jerkline skinner, Curley, the...