Of mice, men, and ethics: literary study and moral concern for nonhuman animals.

This article examines philosopher Alice Crary's ideas on how literature can reveal the moral characteristics of nonhuman animals, focusing on John Steinbeck's novella *Of Mice and Men* as a case study. Crary argues that animals, like humans, live "inside ethics," meaning their actions express what they find important, and that literature offers morally engaged perspectives that scientific accounts often lack. The article critiques common pedagogical approaches to teaching *Of Mice and Men* for insufficiently addressing animals' moral lives and proposes an ethics-focused reading method that integrates literary analysis with personal reflection to deepen students' understanding of animals' moral experiences. It calls for interdisciplinary collaboration among philosophers of education, animal studies scholars, and English educators to enrich literary pedagogy with ethical considerations of human and nonhuman animals.