Free A Brief Discussion On Of Mice And Men By John Steinbeck Essay Sample

Before moving forwards, let’s go through a brief overview of this short but heartfelt and insightful novel. It starts with an introduction of George who is small and smart, and Lenny, a huge but mentally slow person and the strange but deep friendship between the two. After getting fired from their jobs, they find solace in a dream of having a ranch of their own, and with that dream very close to their hearts, both set off in search of a new job. They arrive at the ranch, their new place of work where George answers most of the questions keeping Lenny skillfully away from the conversation. They have two problems though; the boss’s son curly, and his nameless wife who has an eye for every man on the ranch except for her husband. George also feels a friendship building up with Slim, who asks a number of questions about his inconceivable relationship with Lenny. Sitting alone at one point in the barn, Lenny pets a dog too long and too hard and kills him in the process. Not long afterwards, Lenny breaks the neck of Curly’s wife by doing the same to her. Everyone looks at the woman’s broken neck and draw the obvious conclusions. Meanwhile, Lenny as instructed by George goes to the river they had decided on because as they had feared, something bad had happened. George meets Lenny at the river and comforts him for a while, and finding him momentarily distracted, puts a gun to his head and shoots.
The way Steinbeck describes friendships and relationships in this novel may be cruel and harsh, but it doesn’t mean that it is not real. The friendships he describes are not the ideas of fairytales and our present illusions of what friendships are supposed to be. Rather, the relationships described in this book more properly reflect the relationships that exist in the harsh world. They were there back in the 80, and they exist today too. These are the kind of friendships where even though these friends spend every second of every single day together, they do not give up on their friends and turn their backs. They do not demand perfection from their friends, rather they accept their flaws and shortcoming and this makes their relationship even sounder and unbreakable.
One of these relationships described in the novel is of George and Lenny. George doesn’t like Lenny because of his habit of petting and killing rabbits and mice. Even then, he sticks by his side to the very end. Even when he kills his dear friend in the end, he does so selflessly. He does it to save fragile Lenny from rotting in Jail and also to prevent him from becoming the victim of a manhunt that was underway. Lenny also chips in with their undying friendship and even seeing how George was being mean to him before they became friends; he felt nothing but sincerity for his friend. Together, the two men dreamt about buying a ranch together, where no one would stop them from doing what they pleased. Sitting beside the river towards the end, Lenny even told George how they were better off than other guys who worked at ranches because they had each other to care for.
The two friends are also quite useful to one another. George even though he doesn’t believe in the dream of getting a ranch with Lenny towards the beginning, still indulges in a fantasy because it makes Lenny happier. Lenny also gives George the opportunity of making plans for the two of them and giving him advice and implicitly puts him in charge. Also, George realizes that Lenny has no knowledge of death beyond the fact that it is the wrong thing and sticks up for him in front of everyone at the ranch. Lenny also is no useless person in George’s life. George may be sometimes frustrated by his lack of intelligence, but he still sees a true companion in Lenny, someone who gives him hope and boosts his spirit.