What Is an Individual's Role in Society?

What is an Individual's Role in Society?

In the society, each person has a role to play to fit in it. Of Mice and Men is a novel by John Steinbeck, which elaborates the different roles characters play in the society to build relationships and to fit in it. The difference in George and Lenny bring s them together as friends since when one has brains the other one has muscle (Steinbeck, page 4). Each one of them has a role in the society, which benefits the other for example; George is the intelligent one and always rescues his friend from the many troubles he gets himself in. George also assists in getting Lenny a job. On the other hand, Lennie offers companionship to George since he has no other friend. He also keeps bullies away from George due to his gigantic figure. This shows that each has a role to play in the society that makes him an asset in one way or another.

The role of a companion is one of the roles individuals play in the society. Humans are social beings, and they are not able to live in solitude. Therefore, they look for companions in any way possible. Candy in the novel is an old man, but he too finds solace in his old dog. When Carlson, a fellow worker in the ranch suggests that his dog be killed, Candy does not embrace this idea since he is attached to his old dog. Eventually, when the dog is killed, he finds solace in both George and Lenny’s idea of buying their own farm and living together. This means that he finds better companion in humans than in his old dog.

In the society, there are those people who pretend to be the guardians of the weak ones but instead, they end up taking advantage of them (Battilana, page, 670). Curley is a good example of such people. He pretends to be protecting his wife from the ranchers, but in real sense, it is jealousy that drives him to do so. As a result, he ends up making his wife feel lonely since she has no companion to talk to. This drives her to flirt with the men on the ranch, and this eventually leads her to her death. George is another character who pretends to be taking care of Lenny but ends up killing him out of mercy (Steinbeck, page 105). He may have had other thoughts of killing him other than out of mercy- to cut-off his reason of always getting in trouble. By killing Lenny, George eliminates a hindrance to his dreams of ever owning his own ranch. This shows that there are men in the society who are selfish and whose role is to keep off any hindrance of progress even though it means killing them. Others do this out of malice like Carlson so much want Candy’s dog to be eliminated. This makes one wonder why but he may be jealous that Candy has a companion and wants it dead for them to be equal.

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