Friendship In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

“Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses” (Ann Landers). George Milton and Lennie Small stick together. Traveling from place to place, they keep each other safe, in hopes of settling on their own personal ranch; a literal place of their dreams. The events of the story prohibits them from living that dream. In Of Mice and Men, author John Steinbeck portrays a strong friendship between the two, but in reality we cannot call their association true friendship because of the lack of equality, the disrespect from George to Lennie directly as well without him knowing. As the story unfolds, it is clear and fair to say that Lennie and George are not equals. Friendship in a personal definition is a mutual respect and care between people. Throughout the novella, George is treats Lennie as a lesser person. It seems that Lennie never thinks for himself. In one

One major example of this is when they’re forced to flee their workplace at the time in the first chapter. Lennie explains to George that he was very fond of eating his beans with ketchup. After repeating the statement several times, George explodes and describes how he could, “live so easy” if he didn’t have to deal with Lennie (Steinbeck 11). He exclaims, “God a’mighty, if I was alone I could live so easy. I could get a job an’ work, an’ no trouble. No mess at all-” (Steinbeck 11). This is described as “giving him hell.” A phrase used quite abundantly by Lennie himself. Assuming their relationship is ‘true friendship,’ why would that be a common occurrence? The fact of the matter is that George knows Lennie isn’t ‘all there’ and still treats and expects him to act like a put-together man. George often verbally abuses Lennie when he gets angry with