Lenny In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck is about two men named George and Lenny. Lenny, not being very intelligent, lost George his job. They are traveling to a farm where they can work. With the money they earn, the aspire to buy and run their own ranch. Lenny has some obsession with rabbits and wants to tend to the rabbits on their ranch. One of the recurring themes is Lenny being unintelligent. Some of the ways Steinbeck shows this is that Lenny forgets things and is not able to stand up for himself when he is being picked on.

Lenny is a sympathetic character for multiple reason. The first reason is that he can not tell the difference between right and wrong in the moment, but after, he feels remorse. For example, on page 5, it says “It’s on’y a mouse, George...Jus’ a dead mouse, George.” In society and in life, to hold, pet, and keep dead animals, especially mice is not acceptable. This trait affects the story because in the end, he kills Curly’s wife by accident, and he just left her there and ran away but he feels bad afterwards. On page 92, Lenny says “I done a real bad thing...I shouldn’t have did that.”. Lenny posessing this trait gets him killed on page 106 because of him not realizing that he was shaking Curley’s wife too violently.

Another trait Lenny posesses is forgetfulness.

On page 6, George says “You say that over two, three times so you sure you won’t forget it.” Lenny seems to forget constantly what his job is and what he must do. Always on his mind are the rabbits. He forgets that he will need to work to achieve their own farm, and that George will not do it all for him. This trait affects the story because it seems that wherever Lenny goes, he forgets to do something or makes a decision that will cost him in the

end.

The third major trait that Lenny posesses that affects the story is Lenny’s childlike behaivior and attitude. Throughout the story, Lenny relies on George to keep him safe and make sure he doesn’t make any bad decisions, like a mom would to her kid. On page 12, George says “You ain’t got sense enough to find nothing to eat.” This quote shows that George is the one who makes it so Lenny stays alive. George restates multiple times throughout the whole story that Lenny does not have enough sense to survive in the real world with no one to keep him safe. Something that was surprising is on page 106 when George shot Lenny. This was surprising because if George was always watching out for Lenny and keeping him safe, why did he decide to shoot him, even though he wanted to stop him from going to jail for the rest of his life.