Barry Healy: 80 years on, Steinbeck's classic still packs a punch

Barry Healy writes that 80 years on, Steinbeck's classic still packs a punch.

Healey says Of Mice and Men,

Thus all the oppressed keep themselves divided, one against the other, trying to gain some scrap of self-worth by putting each other down. Yet George and Lennie have a secret that cuts through this fog of alienation and with just a few words inspire the spirit of the workers.

Their dream is to buy their own farm and, through sharing the labour, create a decent life for themselves. As Lennie naively blurts it out, the individual workers' initial scepticism falls away as they dare to imagine themselves as part of it.

George and Lenny's dream is a synonym for socialism and its power is subversive in the farm.

Emphasis Mine

Our primary identity is that of workers. To fully realise that identity, we need to have the vision of Socialism.