The Weaknesses Of George In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

Walking the Line George is not only one of the main characters in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, but he is also one of the most complex. He walks the line with an array of mixed emotions, such as his quick anger towards Lennie and then at key moments, he also shows his loving, compassionate side that we don’t always get to experience. This is the very complicated side to him due to his personal emotional distress. For example, having to take care of Lennie and then, due to disturbing events, he feels he needs to shoot him in order to protect him.. Although the story stops there, we can infer that particular situation causes George even more emotional damage, and adds to his overwhelming loneliness.

In John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, how were George and Lennie able to remain friends even though it seemed odd to most people? Although George struggles to take care of Lennie, he remains best friends with him throughout the entire book and helps him. “The relationship between George and Lennie is an oddity to everyone at the farm, but especially to the boss who can not possibly believe that two men could be so strongly attached unless they were blood relatives” (Newman, 37) This paper will focus on why George felt so connected to Lennie and felt the need to protect and take care of him. A lesson that can be taken from Of Mice and Men is that friendship can change the way a person is and cause them to love someone as if they are family.

Relationships between two friends that have known each other for years is what always make a book interesting. In the book, Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, Lennie and george have this type of relation. Lennie and George are two friends who have known each other for a long time and get along fairly well. Despite having some discussions due to Lennie simpleness, they love each other and dream of sharing a house with rabbits. They care a lot for each other as shown in the following quote.

The relationship between George and Lennie is closer than a casual friendship. The first reason why George and Lennie have a close friendship is because George takes care of Lennie. George takes care of Lennie because they have been friends for a long time. For example, Lennie likes to find mice, but George takes the mice away because Lennie always kills them. Another reason why George and Lennie have a close friendship is because they are always together.

Realism is portrayed in both John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and Susan Glaspell’s Trifles. They both have similarities and differences regarding the tenets of verisimilitude. Of Mice and Men mostly relates to the harsh realities in everyday life, while Trifles focuses more on the importance of scientific studies and processes. The similarity that both of these stories have in common is that the characters in both stories are more important that the plot of the story. Of Mice and Men is a harsh reality within itself.

In John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, the era of the Great Depression in the 1930’s is revealed through a simple story of ranch workers who hope to improve their lives. Migrant workers, George and Lennie, have a friendship that is based on trust and protection. The other workers lack the companionship and bond that these two men have. In the novel, the absence and presence of friendship is the motivation for the characters’ actions.

George and Lennie are very different physically and mentally. From the book, George is described as a small man with sharp features. Lennie is described to be big and muscular with sloping with shoulders. Obviously, this shows us the difference in their physical features with one being small and the other big. In the book, you can tell Lennie has one main strength which is his brute force and hard-working quality.

Steinbeck shows that there is a great price to be paid for not being sensitive to the needs of others as well as for taking responsibility for others. We see this take place in the novel Of Mice and Men where characters of the book are vulnerable,heartless, insensitive, and sensitive. A price is to be paid for all of these characteristics. The vulnerable characters in Of Mice and Men include Lennie, Candy, and Crooks.

In a nutshell, the novel ‘Of Mice and Men’ is about two men who seem to offer completely opposite personalities, an example would state that George is smart and mature, and being the opposite of George, Lennie is the mentally underdeveloped, sluggish man we have grown to love and adore today. During the first three chapters of this novel, we have learned about many characters, regard of their personality and characteristics, we also learn that each character has his or her own past, regrets, ambitions, and needs. In this essay, I will explain how each need aspire to each characters, and how affects to others is as well. Examples such as Candy, Crooks, and Curley’s Wife. Curly feels unneeded in the world because he feels disables.

George is an extremely complex protagonist; Steinbeck’s unique style and vulgar diction throughout the first chapter convolutes the reader’s feelings about George. George’s persona rapidly changes from one extreme to the other. On one hand, George appears abusive towards Lenny and repeatedly calls him a “crazy bastard” and a “crazy son of a bitch”, but George also claims that he would “go nuts” without Lenny and that he was “jus’ foolin’’ when he uttered all the cutting remarks (Steinbeck 4-13). George’s comments fully illustrate his ambivalence towards Lenny. The reader is unsure of George because George himself is uncertain of his feelings towards Lenny.