George tells Lennie, "Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world." What does George claim about ranch hands as a group?

George goes on, "With us it ain't like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us." What does this add to his speech about loneliness?

Crooks asks Lennie, "S'pose you didn't have nobody. S'pose you couldn't go into the bunkhouse and play rummy 'cause you was black." What makes Crooks's loneliness different from George's?

Crooks says, "A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you." What does Crooks say company has to be?

Crooks tells Lennie, "Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land... It's just in their head. They're all the time talkin' about it." What is Crooks saying about the little farm?

Curley's wife says to Lennie in the barn, "I never get to talk to nobody. I get awful lonely." What does this show about her place on the ranch?

Candy tells George, "I'd make a will an' leave my share to you guys, in case I kick off, 'cause I ain't got no relatives nor nothing." What does the offer reveal about Candy?

Carlson shoots Candy's old dog behind the head with his Luger while the men wait in the bunkhouse. Which later event does this scene prepare?

Candy says, "I ought to of shot that dog myself. I shouldn't ought to of let no stranger shoot my dog." What does his regret tell a reader about George's choice at the pool?

In the first chapter Lennie is carrying a dead mouse in his pocket to pet, and George throws it across the pool. What does the dead mouse establish before the two men reach the ranch?

Over the dead puppy in the barn Lennie says, "Why do you got to get killed? You ain't so little as mice." What does the dead puppy prepare?

Lennie will not let George finish the farm speech without the rabbits, and asks how he gets to tend them. What do the rabbits stand for in Lennie's version of the dream?

Candy hears the news in the barn and asks George whether the two of them can still get the little place. What has Curley's wife's death done to the plan?

The novella opens beside a green pool on the Salinas River and its last chapter returns to that same pool, with the same brush and sycamores. What is the name for a work that ends where it began?

Before they reach the ranch George tells Lennie, "If you jus' happen to get in trouble... hide in the brush till I come for you." What device is Steinbeck using?

Lennie asks George to "tell how it's gonna be," and Steinbeck notes George "repeated his words rhythmically, as though he had said them many times before." What do we call an image or idea repeated through a work like this?

The last chapter opens with a heron at the pool lancing down and swallowing a water snake, and a second snake swims up just as Lennie arrives. What is this quiet killing doing there?

Every chapter of the novella opens with one place described in detail (the riverbank, the bunkhouse, the harness room, the barn), and the action then stays in that place. What does this make each chapter resemble?

The novella's last line is Carlson's: "Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin' them two guys?" What makes it ironic?

Three of these are true of the farm plan. Which is NOT?

Steinbeck took his title from Robert Burns's To a Mouse: "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley," that is, often go wrong. What does the allusion prepare a reader to expect of the farm plan?

George and Lennie walk in to a ranch near Soledad in the Salinas Valley carrying their blankets in bindles, and George talks of the fifty bucks he draws at the end of the month. What kind of workers does this make them?

Crooks says he has "seen hunderds of men come by on the road an' on the ranches with their bindles on their back," all with land in their heads. What does his count show about the 1930s setting?

Three of these are true of Candy's dog and what follows. Which is NOT?

Three of these are true of Crooks in the harness room. Which is NOT?