Sympathy In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

Your stomach feels empty, your chest hurts while breathing in, you get sad. It’s the feeling you get when you walk past homeless people, you see someone sick, someone being insulted, hurt, sad or bony, starving children in Africa on your tv screen. Sympathy. It’s one of the most human feelings, it’s part of what makes us human. In his novel ‘Of Mice and Men’, which was published in 1937, sympathy is probably one of the or maybe even the most anticipated theme. In this novel the reader accompanies the big and mentally limited Lennie and the sharp-minded George who looks out for him as they find new work on a ranch. Throughout the book the difficult relationship between Lennie and George is a big topic, as well as the increasing amount of pity and sympathy you feel for several characters of this story. Although Crooks and Curley’s wife are sympathetic characters, Lennie deserves the reader’s pity most because at the end he even gets killed for something he didn’t want to do.
Crooks deserves the reader’s sympathy because he is African American, for which he has been treated poorly his entire life. In chapter two, the way he is introduced as “the stable buck’s a n**ger”, sets a negative tone as for how the character is treated by others.(20) Although according to

Candy he is a “nice fella” he is treated badly by the boss too, who “gives him hell when he’s mad”(20)
Another reason the audience sympathises with Crooks is that he has a ”crooked back” that hurts all the time because a “horse kicked him”.(20) Because of this injury he has “liniment” that he rubs on his spine.
Even though Crooks definitely has lived a bad and pitiful life, I feel greater sympathy for Curley’s wife mainly because of how her story ends. After being forbidden by her mother to pursue an acting career, she ends up meeting Curley and marrying him. But the audience soon recognizes that it isn’t a happy marriage and she even reveals to Lennie that she doesn’t “like Curley” because “he ain’t a nice fella”(89) Curley apparently treats her very possessively and is very jealous as she “never gets to talk to nobody”, which is why she gets “awful lonely”(86) Just as Crooks she is treated poorly and degrading and is often called names like “looloo” or “jailbait” by the other men such as Whit because according to them “she got the eye goin’ all the time on everybody”(51) She acts this way probably just because she is so unhappy and lonely in her marriage and just wants to talk to other people but even after her death the men still perceive her as a ”God damn tramp”(95)
Her death is also the reason that makes you sympathise with her the most. All she was meaning to do is to talk to somebody, but instead she got killed. Due to this abrupt and untimely death she never got to fulfill any of her dreams and had to die unhappy, which makes you feel very sorry for her.
Finally the character I believe can be pitied the most is Lennie. Lennie often gets treated badly by others but most of the time, he doesn’t even understand what’s going on. Due to this he sometimes gets used and taken advantage of by other people, evidenced by even George who says he used to “play jokes on ’im ‘cause he was too dumb to take care of ‘imself .”(40) Because of his mental disabilities Lennie is treated as very low placed in the society. Crooks even goes as far as saying if George was gone “they’ll tie ya up with a collar,, like a dog.” (72)
Furthermore, he is often punished for situations where he doesn’t understand what he did wrong.

The reader empathizes with him because Steinbeck’s characters say,“he ain’t mean” and sets him to be a favorable character the reader feels sorry for (41). The reader understands that Lennie doesn’t want to hurt or harm anybody but “he gets in trouble alla time because he’s so God damn dumb” and simply doesn’t understand what he’s doing wrong like the time he touched a girls dress which got both Lennie and George run out of the town (41). Finally he even gets killed to put him out of his misery by George for accidentally breaking Curley’s wife's’ neck, although all he actually wanted to do is to feel her

hair.

Crooks, Curley’s wife and Lennie have all lived miserable lives and have been treated degradingly all the time. They didn’t deserve what happened to them and at least never intentionally hurt or harmed anybody. This novel shows us the different ways people react to misery and loneliness. Whether it is isolation, seeking for attention or panicking out of anxiety, everybody has felt or acted like this before, maybe not to this extent but this relatability is what makes us sympathise with these characters. Many of the issues addressed in the book are still issues today. Although lesser today both racism and sexism are still very present in our society and should not be forgotten or overlooked. This book makes us think about that and maybe even inspires us to do something about it. Another lesson we can learn from ‘Of Mice and Men’ is to not judge a book by it’s cover; On first look people might seem angry, mean or hurtful but you shouldn’t judge them unless you know their whole story.