Select the word that best describes the tone of the paragraph. John Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men is, above all else, a novel about friendship. The two protagonists, George and Lennie, have a deep, though perhaps unequal, friendship that plays out to an inevitably tragic ending. In the novel, Steinbeck explores the lonely lives of transient men as he probes the larger questions of justice, fairness, and the American Dream in 1930s America.