This week on Required Reading, we talk race, mental illness, and the Incredible Hulk. We read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, but just want to talk about the rabbits.
Host: Dr. Nic Hoffmann
Co-hosts: Mike Burns and Mike Carroll
From the Penguin Classics back cover: “They are an unlikely pair: George is “small and quick and dark of face”; Lennie, a man of tremendous size, has the mind of a young child. Yet they have formed a “family,” clinging together in the face of loneliness and alienation.
Laborers in California’s dusty vegetable fields, they hustle work when they can, living a hand-to-mouth existence. For George and Lennie have a plan: to own an acre of land and a shack they can call their own. When they land jobs on a ranch in the Salinas Valley, the fulfillment of their dream seems to be within their grasp. But even George cannot guard Lennie from the provocations of a flirtatious woman, nor predict the consequences of Lennie’s unswerving obedience to the things George taught him.”
