The Importance Of Friendship In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

There are good and bad friends. Good friends truly care for you and sticks with you in the troublous times. Bad friends hurt you and try to take advantage. In the novella “ Of Mice and Men “ by John Steinbeck he symbolizes friendship. In the novella there are 2 characters that have a friendship and their names are George and Lennie. After, reading the novella I think that George was a bad friend towards Lennie.

I think George is a bad friend towards Lennie because throughout the book George constantly picks on him and talks bad about him. For example, George was talking about Lennie and he said “ Course Lennie’s a god damn nuisance most of the time” (Steinbeck 41). This scene demonstrates that George is a bad friend because George believes that Lennie is just annoying and constantly gets in the way of George when something good happens. Another, scene that demonstrates that he was a bad friend to Lennie was that George said “ I was feeling pretty smart. I turns to Lennie and says. Jump in” (Steinbeck 40). Here George tells him to jump into the lake knowing that Lennie can’t swim. Lennie almosts dies and a good friend wouldn’t do this.

After the conversation with the boss Lennis says “ You said I was your cousin, George.” George replies “ Well that was a lie. An’ I’m glad it was” (Steinbeck 24). This shows that he does like the idea of Lennie being close to related to him, Also, George says that he would rather shoot himself than e a relative to Lennie (Steinbeck 26). George doesn’t want to be close to George or rather careless for him. George says “ If I was alone I could live so easy” (Steinbeck 103) This demonstrates that his life would be better without Lennie around. A good friendship would want their friends to stick by them, but George wants Lennie to go