Tragic Hero In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

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Author and Critic John Clark Pratt claims that George Milton is Steinbeck's greatest tragic hero, according to definition this means that George is a character who is basically good, but commits an evil. However George Milton is in actuality not a tragic character, he is selfish and lacking the good a tragic hero would have. He commits an evil that will benefit him and disregards the consequences his actions have on others. The evil that Pratt believes classifies George as a tragic hero is likely referring to when he kills Lennie at the end of the novel. Although George is clearly affected by the loss of Lennie he could have done what he had done before in the town of Weed and ran away with Lennie, instead he kills Lennie and returns to the …show more content…

At first Lennie can benefit George by being a second set of hands working at the ranch with him, he would’ve given over whatever stake he made there to George due to his blind obedience. Once Lennie kills Curley’s wife he loses the possibility to finish his work on the ranch and collect his stake for George, so George kills Lennie instead of running away and helping Lennie. Throughout the novel George does not benefit Lennie, he only contributes to his poor mental state, Page 10 Lennie says that he always killed the mice he pet “because they was so little”. George only offers to get him larger animals to fix this problem instead of trying to get Lennie to control himself, as a result Lennie blames whatever he kills for their own death instead of recognizing that he is at fault for their killing, this is proven page 85 when Lennie says to his dead dog “Why do you got to get killed? You ain't so little as mice”. If George had properly educated Lennie in what he was actually doing he might have recognized his strength and not have killed Curley's wife. Interestingly enough George also indirectly had the same ill effect on

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