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Emotional Intelligence In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

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Intelligence, according to Webster’s Dictionary is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. Throughout the story, Of Mice and Men, Lennie is faced with many decisions which shows his two types of intelligence levels. In Of Mice and Men, we are presented with different scenes which showing the reader, logical intelligence and emotional intelligence. Lennie is a character with both logical and emotional intelligence because he knows both types of emotions well and he possesses more emotional than logical intelligence. Firstly, Lennie is able to use his logical intelligence for a given situation. All through the novella we see times where Lennie is forced to use his logical intelligence. Around the beginning of the story …show more content…

We see this in many different occasions in Of Mice and Men, such as when Lennie is with Curley’s Wife before accidentally killing her. “She screamed then, and Lennie's other hand closed over her mouth and nose. "Please don't," he begged. "Oh! Please don't do that. George'll be mad." (Steinbeck ______). Lennie’s conscience, or emotional intelligence to do this to Curley’s wife just to get her to stop screaming so George doesn’t get mad at him. If Lennie had more logical intelligence his entire personality and the entire story line would've changed for both George and Lennie. George needs someone like Lennie who has more of an emotional side to keep him sane throughout the day. Also, in Of Mice and Men Lennie is predestined to be more emotional while George is the logical and street smart rather than imagination based. In conclusion, Lennie is an extremely intelligent character. In today’s society we do not think about the emotional intelligence and focus on logical and knowledge based intelligence. Despite the fact that emotional intelligence has a greater value compared to logical intelligence it is looked down upon and is not given any attention. Both forms of the intelligence is greatly used on a daily basis, but for some occasions we should use emotional than logical or vice versa. Lennie displays both forms of intelligence in Of Mice and Men and has more emotional than logical

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