YMMV / Of Mice and Men

Book

• Alternative Character Interpretation: In the 1992 movie, Curley's wife is far more sympathetic than in the book — specifically, the scene in which she arguably crosses the Moral Event Horizon by threatening to have Crooks lynched is omitted. The director wanted her depicted more as a "sad angel" rather than The Vamp she appeared to be in the novel.
  • Steinbeck once wrote to the original actress portraying Curley's wife in theater that she was sympathetic.
    She was told over and over that she must remain a virgin because that was the only way she could get a husband ... She only had that one thing to sell and she knew it. She is a nice, kind girl and not a floozy. No man has ever considered her as anything except a girl to try to make ... As to her actual sex life — she has had none except with Curley and there has probably been no consummation there since Curley would not consider her gratification and would probably be suspicious if she had any.
• Angst Aversion: The hardships George and Lennie go through can be a bit much for some readers as nothing ever goes right for them and almost all the people they meet are not very pleasant people.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Lennie has a bizarre dream where he gets berated by his aunt Clara and a talking rabbit.
• Fridge Horror: If, somehow, they manage to stop the mob from lynching Lennie, it wouldn't be much of stretch to guess that the judicial system wouldn't be easy on him, either. To go a bit further, knowing how institutions were back then, what would have happened to Lennie if he didn't have George watching after him before that point?
• It Was His Sled: George Mercy Kills Lennie.
• Memetic Mutation: Lennie's love of rabbits sprung from this novel, with Pop-Cultural Osmosis thanks to Bugs Bunny.
• Narm: The film version of Lennie's death can incite some unintentional laughs due to how unexpectedly quick it was.
• Parody Displacement: George and Lennie are far better known to modern audiences as characters regularly spoofed in Looney Tunes and Tex Avery cartoons ("Which way did he go, George? Which way did he go?") Tex Avery even made a cartoon based on the character Lennie called "Lonesome Lenny", where a dim-witted dog finally took out Screwball Squirrel.
• Shocking Moments: Goes up exponentially in the final two chapters with Lennie accidentally killing Curley's wife and George killing Lennie.
• Squick: Curley's glove. It's not that it's full of Vaseline, it's that he's using it for his wife.
• Values Dissonance:
  • The extremely sympathetic character Candy freely using the N-word is pretty jarring now, but this is a case of Fair for Its Day.
  • Lennie, a mentally disabled man, is constantly yelled at, berated, scolded, and treated like a burden by everyone around him, including George. At one point, George pretends that Lennie is his cousin to explain to the ranch head hiring them why they're hanging out together but later says that if Lennie actually was his cousin, he'd shoot himself. These days, it's less acceptable to make fun of the disabled in any fashion or treat them like a liability, though back in the 30s, the mentally disabled had fewer personal rights and any mental disabilities that existed were either undiagnosed or poorly understood compared to the modern age. Asylums in the 1930s were also very inept and outright inhumane in their time; often relying on electroshock therapy, hydrotherapy, metrazol convulsions, insulin shock therapy, and beatings.
  • George also uses the slur "Jap" when mentioning the farm that he and Lennie plan to purchase.
  • Slim mentions drowning four of the puppies one of his dogs gave birth to, justifying it by saying he couldn't take care of that many. This was an accepted practice at the time the book was written but has largely fallen out of favor thanks to the growth of animal shelters.
• The Woobie: George. The man constantly loses his job and seems like he actually is a pretty nice guy, but he has to endure a lot of pain since he travels with Lennie. He causes George to frequently lose his job and be on the run and George can't have a social life because he always has to take care of Lennie AND he forced himself to shoot Lennie. You gotta feel a LITTLE sorry for him because of that.
  • Lennie, too. However goofy it may be, the scene in which he gets internal dialogue (with the aunt who raised him and with a rabbit) is utterly heartbreaking; he blames himself for everything that goes wrong in George's life (and he might even be right), and his biggest fear is being abandoned. And all he really wants to do is hold little animals.
  • Curley's wife, to an extent, sliding between this and a Jerkass Woobie (though she loses much her jerkiness in the movie). She's married to a badly-tempered man who is extremely possessive of her, and keeps her as a trophy wife. She's obviously lonely, but all the workers are too scared of her husband to speak with her. She later tries to chat up Lennie, which ends with her panicking when he won't stop stroking her hair and, when she starts to scream, him killing her by accident.
  • Crooks. He's a lonely black man that isn't allowed to befriend the other workers because of his race. He receives no respect despite being one of the few, at least we know of, who once lived on his "own" land. He's now jaded due to racism and loneliness, explaining his attitude toward Lennie initially. Oh, and to add insult to injury, just when things seemed to be looking up for him, Curley's wife crushes that pretty quickly.
  • Candy. The poor old man lost his hand years ago, and he loses his beloved dogs, and eventually his dream...

Band

• Broken Base: Between those who welcome the Nu Metal elements added and those who miss the Metalcore of the previous albums. This doesn't even begin to describe the reaction to Cold World.
• Harsher in Hindsight: "Pain" is a song entirely made of Austin's anger at the constant pain Marfan syndrome causes him. A few months after it was released Austin had to leave the band for good after doctors told him that due to his health issues, if he kept screaming he'd be causing himself permanent spine and nervous system damage.
• Signature Song: "Second and Serbing" for their earlier work, "Would You Still Be There" for their later material.
• Win Back the Crowd: Their post-Austin songs have been well-received for toning the Nu Metal down to a more manageable level a la Restoring Force and bringing back more prominent Metalcore elements, making their music recognizable as their own again as opposed to sounding completely different.

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