Powerlessness In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

Steinbeck explores lots of real world problems and lessons in his books. He writes about things such as greed, loss, and powerlessness. Through his writing, he shows that everyone is powerless in some way or another. For example, not everyone has power over their own abilities and Steinbeck shows this through Lennie, a mentally disabled character in Of Mice and Men. And in The Pearl, he illustrates that women didn’t always have power over their men counterparts. In Of Mice and Men, one of the characters, Lennie, is powerless. When he was younger, he loved petting mice. “[He’d] pet ‘em, and pretty soon they bit my fingers and [he] pinched their heads a little and then they was dead,” Lennie didn’t mean to kill the mice, but he had no control over his own strength (Of Mice and Men, 10).
George, Lennie’s friend, and Lennie got a job on a farm. And soon, George isn’t just killing mice. He loves the soft fur, and he enjoyed petting the puppy he met. Once again, he killed the puppy. He liked the dog and

Juana, from The Pearl, has no power over her husband. After finding a large pearl, Kino becomes obsessed over how much this pearl must be worth. He fantasizes about having a rifle and his son, Coyotito, going to school and learning to read. Everyone in the town soon learns about this pearl and “Kino’s pearl went into the dreams, the speculations, the schemes, the plans, the futures, the wishes, the needs, the lusts, the hungers, of everyone” (The Pearl, 23). Juana soon notices that she and Kino have become every man’s enemy because of this pearl. She says, “‘Throw it away, Kino. Let us break it between stones. Let us bury it and forget the place. Let us throw it back into the sea. It has brought evil. Kino, my husband, it will destroy us” (The Pearl, 37). But Kino doesn’t listen. He keeps the pearl for himself. Juana had no power over her husband, and soon the pearl will bring destruction to their