Of Mice And Men
Jennifer Ruiz
Ms.Matzke’s 4th period Character Essay
Last summer I attended school to take PE, well in my class there was a kid that had some small mental problems but other than that he was a good A student. People didn’t like to be around him and the PE teachers would always get mad at him. In John Steinbeck’s book, Of Mice and Men he reveals a character named Lennie that also has mental challenges and throughout the book others get mad at him which leads him into problems. Lennie was the center of problems because he was childish, slow-witted and strong; traits that he has no control over.
One of Lennie’s character traits is being childish. This is known by the way Lennie talks. On page three Lennie says “look George look what I done.” Not many adults talk like that, only three year olds, which assumes his childish trait. In that same page it talks about how Lennie dipped his whole head underwater, hat dripped down on his blue coat and ran down his back. This also explains how Lennie id child-like, because it explains his reaction of how he killed Curley’s wife.
Another important trait shown in Lennie is that he is very slow-witted. An example of this is shown in page 23 Lennie asks George “I wasn’t kicked in the head with no horse, was I George?” This proves that Lennie has a low mentality Lennie has trouble remembering things that have happened like this example found in page 7 Of Mice and Men: “like I did in Weed?” asked Lennie, then George responded ” Oh so ya forgot that too did ya? Well, I aint gonna remind ya, fear ya do it again.” Here it shows that Lennie tends to forget allot of things to the point that George doesn’t bother to remind him. Knowing that Lennie is slow-witted makes a difference because this is what causes trouble because he doesn’t know right from wrong. Slow-witted people like him don’t think of the consequences that are goingto happen so this is why he wasn’t thinking of what could have happened to him if he killed Curley’s wife, so he just did but by accident and for not being able to think straight in other words for being slow-witted.
The last trait we should know about Lennie is his strength. Lennie shows this trait when Curley’s fist was swinging at Lennie and Lennie reached for it. The next minute Curley was flopping like a fish on a line, and his closed fist was lost in Lennie’s hand. Even though Lennie didn’t intend to his strength is nothing to play around with. The way we know that he uses his strength unintentionally is because he has killed the things that he mostly loves like his mouse or his puppy. “Why do you got to get killed?” You ain’t so little as mice. I didn’t bounce you hard.” Lennie says this to his pup after killing him, which shows that Lennie doesn’t have fool control of his strength. Lennie’s strength plays a big part in this story because it actually leads him to his own death.
Overall Lennie had a big impact on the story. his traits caused him allot of trouble with out intentions. Lennie was childish so he was everywhere and he loved playing around but the fact that he was slow-witted prevented him form setting limits to his actions and strength. Now in days people like Lennie have to be understood and accepted for their actions, causes and believes because the fact that Lennie got killed with a dream within him, in my opinion, was unfair. Just like the kid that was in PE class no one has the right to judge him. People like Lennie are better off in special programs that will actually help them.
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