Because the entire story line, or scenario, is repeated, cyclically, in mankind's exercise of the "continuous creation theory," or, time/space continuum.

Probably, if a man were psychically prediposed, and was hypnotised, he would reveal to himself, or the hypnotist, that he was one of the characters in the story, at another time and place: unless he did, indeed, experience a like-scenario and has blocked it from his conscious mind.

As King Solomon put it, "There is nothing new under the Sun."

Lennie and his bud actually traumatized Me and a friend, both kindergarten-age, by a stream, under a railroad trestle, but we were spared molestation, probably, when our parents and the police, who were searching for us wee adventurers, arrived just in time to spare us from whatever was going to happen. Maybe one of the vagabonds would have "loved us kids to death." The bums got away, but they still revisit me in my dreams.

My psychiatrists, lame as all of them have been,all, have drawn blanks when I tell them that Of Mice and Men, the novel or the movie sparks remembrances of that particular childhood event.