This expression, phrased above as I first learned it, succeeds in capturing a timeless and tragic truth. It's origins lie in a poem written by Robert Burns in 1785 titled, "To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up In Her Nest, With the Plough". Upon disturbing the wintering nest of a mouse, as the title indicates, Burns earnestly laments his unexpected role in the mouse's misfortune. Eloquently, he empathizes with the animal's fate upon his realization of their shared circumstance - that of mortality and necessity, preparation and expectation, and their eventual surrender to the capriciousness of fortune. This common condition is where the poem finds its conclusion, although he makes one distinction: that it is the mouse's blessing to live in humble, perhaps oblivious acceptance, while he must mourn and fret and "guess and fear" under the burden of his recognition.
In the final pages of Steinbeck's novel, right where "the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green," George Milton quietly and mournfully resigns himself to the realization that reality moves independently of his intentions. He submits to his circumstances, rather than forcing himself further upon them.
To say that it was foreseeable is one thing... to say that it was ultimately inevitable, one more disagreeable. The implied fatalism of Lennie's insensibility doesn't sit right with me. Could it really be that, wherever they might have tried, the simple dreams of these two men were destined for failure? There is evidence provided to indicate as much. Crooks' piercing remarks to Lennie in his room show that he has glimpsed the recurring truth that Steinbeck is pursuing. Slim's "calm, Godlike eyes" have seen it too, yet they settled upon a deferential acquiescence that Crooks' did not or cannot attain. As George walks away with Slim, my heart drops. Can we blame him for this final capitulation?
Lennie's vacuous, oblivious movements are akin to the slow turning of the world itself, moving slowly and plainly towards its assured denouement. Despite George's sincerest efforts, Lennie moves as a force of nature, and as the elemental forces that drive the story come finally into contact with one another, the climactic incident in the barn is, perhaps, the inevitable result. But still, I have to reject the fatalistic nuances of the story's ending.
Why do his characters seem so powerless? Maybe Lennie's fate was sealed, though I don't want to believe it. And while I thought George was the only one with any hope of catch up to his dreams, perhaps they were connected more closely than I understood, such that the death of the first caused a sort of collapse within the latter. However, to say that one character or another is representative of the mouse's philosophy in Burns' poem is, I think, a simplistic approach. So I won't, even though I want to. Steinbeck's characters are too complex, even at just a hundred pages, to draw such a bland parallel. Therefore, the question I have is this: does Burns' mouse, his plans and home having crumbled, roll over and die? Or does he begin the nest anew?
To recognize the fickle nature of fate is one thing; to relinquish the capacity to fight against it is quite another.
