Professor Rodas' questions and notes on Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, drawing a thread of connection between the "inevitable" tragedy of Lennie's death and what Rosemarie Garland-Thomson calls the "cultural logic of euthanasia."

1. QUESTIONS for
groups
1. Who is disabled in the story?
Can you find every example of
disability?
2. How would you describe
Lennie’s connection to
ANIMALS? Find examples.
3. What clues does the reader get
that Lennie might be
DANGEROUS?

2. Access to
FREE books
using Libby!

3. John Steinbeck’s
Of Mice and Men:
Justifying Murder of Disabled
People
Julia Miele Rodas
Lehman College
Spring 2022

4. Of Mice and
Men, John
Steinbeck

5. SETTING
• Where?
• When?
PLOT
• What happens in the story?
• What’s the sequence of action?
CHARACTERS
• Who are the
main
characters?
OVERVIEW

6. QUESTIONS for
groups
1. Who is disabled in the story?
Can you find every example of
disability?
2. How would you describe
Lennie’s connection to
ANIMALS? Find examples.
3. What clues does the reader get
that Lennie might be
DANGEROUS?

7. bonus
QUESTIONS
 How does George benefit from
his relationship with Lennie?
 Who are the women in the story?
Find examples? How would you
describe them?

8. THEORETICAL CONTEXTS:
Representation=Death
disability “buddy” stories + sterilization & eugenics + disability “snuff”

9. Sonia Loftis, “The Autistic
Victim: Of Mice and Men
and Flowers for
Algernon”

10. Stephanie Jensen-Moulton,
Intellectual Disability in Carlisle
Floyd’s Of Mice and Men, p. 131

11. Buck v. Bell, 1927, authorizes nonconsensual
sterilization for “feebleminded” people
from the Encyclopedia of American Disability History

12. Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, Intellectual Disability
in Carlisle Floyd’s Of Mice and Men, p. 130

13. How Nazis tested
genocidal techniques
on disabled children
Kenny Fries, The New York Times