Man's longing for a piece of land is a favorite theme of Steinbeck's and he returned to it in nearly every novel her wrote. Although you can see several particular examples of personal tragedy in Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck clearly also meant the story to be a parable of the human condition as the novel's title indicates. In the poem from which the title is taken, the poet Robert Burns wrote that "The best laid schemes o'mice an' men gang aft a-gley." The phrase "gang aft a-gley" literally means "go often astray", but Steinbeck does not translate Burns' "aft" as "often", but instead as "always." In light of this information, what is the significance of the title as it relates to the text. Be sure to make specific reference to the text in showing the correlation between the title and how it relates to the work.