Of mice and men

I've been trying to remember the name of this cracking Steinbeck book.

I really got into his stuff as a kid. What I've been thinking about a bit in the book where one of the two brothers at the centre of the story, the slow one who needs to be looked after by his brother, accidentally crushes what I remember was a wheat mouse or something. Something someone might easily fit in the palm of their hand. The slow brother crushes it because he doesn't know his own strength.

The reason I thought of it is the parallel between society and suicide. Society crushes beautiful organisms without thinking of consequences. It is so slow and stupid and insensitive to its own power that it crushes valuable members of the human race. It drives people to suicide because it is slow and stupid and exists guilt free because it doesn't understand the harm it inflicts.

Like an evil child it harms indiscriminately. Hmm. Perhaps the Steinbeck analogy doesn't apply after all. Steinbecks character was innocent.

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