Lennie In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

One of the main characters in Of Mice and Men is a man named Lennie Small. Lennie is a, "huge man, shapeless of face, with large, pale eyes, with wide sloping shoulders" (46). Lennie has been causing lots of trouble for himself because of his mental disability. Every time he touches something, specifically an animal, he squeezes so hard yet does not know his own strength. In other words, he does not realize it when he strangles animals to death. To him, it might seem like a normal hug, but to others, it might feel like they are being choked to death. By the time he stops squeezing, the organism he strangled is already dead. Lennie is seen holding a dead mouse, a dead puppy, and a dead woman, all of which Lennie killed due to his love of petting soft things. But because he has a mental disability, these actions are not Lennie's fault. One of his actions happens to be the

In the first part of the book, George and Lennie are walking along the Salinas River that "drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green"(44). There are "golden foothill slopes curve[d] up to the strong and rocky Gabilan mountains"(44) on the side of the river. The path on which the men are walking, is described as being "beaten hard by boys coming down from the ranches to swim in the deep pool, and beaten hard by tramps who come wearily down from the highway" (44). In this scene, the reader gets an understanding on where they are headed and what happened outside of the book; the men had just escaped from a place called Weed up north. However, it is unclear as to why they were escaping or what happened to make them. After Lennie gorges water from the river, George decides that they should camp beside the river for the night; they were headed to acquire a job at another farm. George is determined to make sure that this time, Lennie does not make a mistake that can cause them to be chased out of their second