To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up
In Her Nest With The Plough

by Robert Burns

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

I'm truly sorry man's dominion,
Has broken nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't!

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's winds ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell-
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld!

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men
Gang aft agley,
An'lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e'e.
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

Of Mice and Men, a novel about two laborers working towards a mutual dream of freedom and satisfaction, was a tale inspired by the poetry of another artist, Robert Burns. A poet and writer born in Alloway in South Ayrshire, Scotland, Robert Burns doesn't appear to be a likely influence to Steinbeck or his characters, Lennie and George. However, the connections between Burns' poem and Steinbeck's book: farming, the use of imagery, the theme of the predatory nature of humanity, and the underlying reality of the impossibility of dreams, helped feed Steinbeck's muse to create his literary masterpiece.

The most obvious similarity between the poem "To a Mouse" and the bookOf Mice and Men is the theme of farming. In the poem, a man is ploughing his field and runs over a nest of a mouse. The poem's main story line is apologizing for the destruction of the nest and the difficult winter he may have, because of the farmer's actions. George and Lennie's whole life consisted of finding farm work throughout California. The majority of the scenery is at a ranch in Salinas where the two buck barley. The authors themselves also worked the fields. During summers, John Steinbeck was a hired hand at ranches nearby his childhood home, which he would later draw from to create his vivid interpretations of the California countryside and the people that inhabited it. Robert Burns was the son of a cottar, a Scottish word for a tenant occupying a cottage with or without land or a married farmworker with a cottage as part of his contract. Between 1784 and 1788, he wrote a lot of his best poetry, including "To a Mouse" while farm-laboring.

Imagery is vivid in both works. Burns' gives a picture of a barren field, plucked of all its plant-life, brisk and blustery, nearing the winter season:

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell -
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell (Burns, stanza 5)

This scene adds to the feeling of hopelessness the poem creates. Of Mice and Men's imagery is first used to create the opposite, a feeling of hope. The first couple of pages are filled with beauty, causing the reader to get a reaction that maybe this time the goals of Lennie and George could be reached. It begins: "A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green…on the valley side the water is lined with trees-willows fresh and green with every spring," (Steinbeck 1). It sounds like a wonderful day, a day that could be full of happily chirping birds and running through fields of colorful flowers. Then only a few pages later, the words change their tone to begin the foreshadowing of what is to come: "The day was going fast now…A water snake slipped along on the pool…The reeds jerked slightly in the current…The sycamore limbs rustled under a little wind that died immediately." This gives a much different tone than the previous setting had.

"I'm truly sorry man's dominion/ Has broken nature's social union/ An' justifies that ill opinion/ Which makes thee startle/ At me, thy poor, earth-born companion/ An' fellow-mortal!" Burns states. Man's dominion is an issue dealt with in both works, even in somewhat of a similar manner. The line here is remorseful towards the mouse, not because he felt bad about the mouse, but because he felt bad that he was unable to escape the reality of humanity, that he cannot help but having dominance over the mouse. Lennie also has a dominance that is out of his control, in the form of physical strength that affects him: "Why do you got to get killed? You ain't so little as mice…God damn you. Why do you got to get killed?" (Steinbeck 85). Lennie's reaction is not out of sadness for the dead pup, but rather anger that he was so weak: "I di'nt know you'd get killed so easy." Yet despite Lennie's physical strength, he is a weak character in the novel. His ignorance proves him to be defenseless against his fate. There are many examples of this predisposition of humans to destroy those weaker than they in Of Mice and Men. Curley's wife, seen throughout the book as weak and obviously the lesser sex, even a nuisance and cause of trouble, initiates a feeling of power for herself by threatening the stable buck, a person she could feel "above," based on him being black and "less" than she: "Well, you keep your place then, Nigger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain't even funny." Ross Douthat of SparkNotes observes: "[Steinbeck] suggests that the most visible kind of strength, that used to oppress others, is itself born of weakness."

Perhaps the most often mentioned line of "To a Mouse" was the line Steinbeck drew the title of his piece from: "The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men/ Gang aft agley [often go awry]/ An'lea'e us nought but grief an' pain/ For promis'd joy!" The meaning behind this line is that no matter how well we plan for something, plans can often fail to become reality and often go wrong, leaving us with nothing but grief and pain, instead of the joy we were expecting. This is definitely a theme in Of Mice and Men. Most of the characters in the book are dreaming of a different life, which is perhaps even the driving force behind their will to survive. George and Lennie dream of a place where they could "live offa the fatta the lan'." Candy joins them with his own dream to "be on our own place, and…be let to work on our own place" to ensure his own survival. Even Crooks mildly interjects an interest in this dream. Curley's wife even is allowed a dream. She wanted to be in Hollywood. It is known that the characters circumstances have robbed them of their wishes, but George and Lennie's plight seems like it is so close to reaching the paradise they dream of when Candy makes it appear almost attainable: "In one month. Right squack in one month," (Steinbeck 61). But the plans do go awry, as the poem states, leaving George full of grief: "…George sat stiffly on the bank and looked at his right hand that had thrown the gun away… 'Never you mind,' said Slim. 'A guy got to sometimes,'" (Steinbeck 107).

At first glance, one may not see the similarities between Of Mice and Men and "To a Mouse," but the aspects of farming, imagery, human nature and impossible dreams are undeniably parallel. Two different men from two different times on opposite sides of the world coming to the same conclusions about people reiterates that perhaps the themes behind the works are, in fact, deeply inherent in humans throughout time.

Works Cited

Douthat, Ross. SparkNotes, LLC. Sparknotes. "SparkNotes: Of Mice and Men"
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/micemen/themes.html

Gittings, Bruce M. University of Edinburgh, Scotland. "Scotland: Gateway to Scotland". 1996.
<http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/home/scotland/scotland.html>

National Steinbeck Center. "John Steinbeck Biography"
<http://www.steinbeck.org/Bio.html>

Rutherford, Nancy Louise. Of Mice and Men - The Student Survival Guide. 2000.
<http://www.lausd.k12.ca.us/Belmont_HS/mice/>

Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men. New York: Penguin Books, 1937.