Animals in the American Classics: How Natural History Inspired Great Fiction

Editor John Cullen Gruesser’s Animals in the American Classics: How Natural History Inspired Great Fiction, examines the multifaceted ways in which animals and nature have influenced the development and impact of some of the most historically significant works of North American writers. As part of the Texas Research Institute for Environmental Studies’ Integrative Natural History Series, this book is an attractive exploration of authors of diverse genres, ranging from Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe to Harper Lee and Cormac McCarthy. While scholarly in its research-based approach, it appeals to the general reader, with each chapter devoted to an author and accompanied by photographs and illustrations.As appropriate for Steinbeck Review, this review focuses primarily on Barbara A. Heavilin’s contributing chapter on Of Mice and Men. In her chapter, titled “A ‘Background Never Stated’: Mice, Snakes, Dogs, and Rabbits in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men,” she explores Steinbeck’s intention when writing the novel and his use of animals to reflect on aspects of human nature. Her analysis is accompanied by photographs of the animals—from snakes to rabbits—that she discusses.Heavilin notes the importance of Steinbeck’s ruminations as he approached the writing of this novel, noting his desire to avoid any suggestion of self-importance. She observes that the portrayal of the hopes and dreams of destitute people desperate for a better life are all woven together with Steinbeck’s perception of the connection between human beings and the natural world. “This writer,” Heavilin states, “makes abundantly clear the commonalities even between mice and men” (162).Steinbeck’s details and descriptions, Heavilin notes, envelop the reader in a sensory experience of the day-to-day life of his characters and their life on the ranch—for example, the use of a German Luger pistol first to kill Candy’s old sheepdog and, later, Lennie. And a fragile innocence is shown in the incidents with the snake and the heron and with Lennie’s killing puppies and mice.Heavilin points out the significance of the title by comparing similarities between Steinbeck’s novel and Robert Burns’s poem “To a Mouse: On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785”—comparing the fragility of the best-laid plans of mice and human beings, with “both novel and poem devoted to the fate of innocence in a world gone awry” (165). The deaths of an old sheepdog, puppies, mice, a heron, and intellectually challenged Lennie all point to this theme.Heavilin further addresses the significance of the elusive idea of the American Dream of a home and farm of their own, which Lennie repeatedly asks George to describe, much like a lullaby. She writes of Lennie’s vision of the rabbits, “It is a lovely story, a lovely dream, an American Dream of freedom, independence, security” (168). She suggests that Steinbeck’s symbolic usages provide his “wall of backdrop”—creating a parable in the face of the rise of Nazi Germany and daring to think about a desire for independence and a life of one’s own, personal goals met, happiness achieved, and a quest for mutual respect among human beings and with the natural world.Heavilin provides provocative commentary on Steinbeck’s personal motives and intentions for writing what some have considered a simplistic novel. But it was his intention, she points out, that this work portray something akin to the simplicity of a child’s perspective of life. The presence of endearing animals—puppies, rabbits, and mice—serves the more complex purpose, however, of revealing how close every living creature is to the fickleness of mortality. Such critical aspects ultimately provide the reader with a profound moral perspective.Beyond this review’s focus on the work of John Steinbeck, further reflection on Animals in the American Classics: How Natural History Inspired Great Fiction in its entirety deserves recognition as it explores some of the most highly regarded American writers who explore human beings and their relationship to the natural world.