Of Mice and Men

of mice and men

Killing in today's society is not viewed as a necessity or even " the right thing to do" and in fact is punishable by law. However in the book Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck wrote in a way to make killing viewed as a good thing. There were many incidents leading up to Lennie's death, some, more predictable then others.

As the book began one read how Lennie and George were poor men on the run. They had been chased out of their last jobs because of Lennie. Since Lennie was unable to control himself, he decided to grab a hold of a girl's velvet dress, only to panic when she began to scream. This lead Lennie to rip her dress and cause her to cry rape. As the town of Weed searched for the so-called rapist the boys were forced to hide in an irrigation ditch until nightfall. In this incident Steinbeck was able to show how George was loyal to Lennie by not leaving his side or even just sending Lennie off on his own. This short story let the readers see just how loyal George truly was to Lennie. One other thing this short part of the story also showed the readers, was how hard it was for George to care for Lennie. It also let the readers see just how mentally slow Lennie really was.

By shooting Lennie did George also save himself? Steinbeck makes it seem that if George had not killed Lennie that the other ranch workers would probably turn against George. They would probably thing that maybe even George was in on the killing of Curley's wife. Steinbeck shows this when Curley's' wife's body was found by George and Slim. They knew they had to tell someone about her death but were scared how too. Knowing that Lennie had killed her, George turned to Slim and asked him to give George a minute to find run off so the other workers wouldn't think that he was involved. This showed the readers that George was always getting blamed and felt guilty for all of Lennie's actions.

The final incident that lead the readers to think that killing Lennie was the only right thing to do, was the incident between Candy and his old dog. Candy was an old man with an even older dog. He had raised the dog from a pup and it was his best friend. Candy had taught the dog everything and the dog, being loyal to Candy, followed him everywhere. All the other workers complained about the dog's smell and told Candy to put the dog out of his misery, for