Lennie Small (Of mice and men)

This essay discusses Lennie and his character as well as his development, his perspectives and his symbolization; what is the author trying to show us through Lennie.

„Behind him walked his opposite, a huge man, shapeless of face, with large, pale eyes, with wide, sloping shoulders; and he walked heavily, dragging his feet a little, the way a bear drags his paws. His arms did not swing at his sides, but hung loosely and only moved because the heavy hands were pendula.“ (p.12 l.11-16)

This is the very first impression we get of Lennie. This shows us, that Lennie is a tall and strong man. But he is not only a good and hard worker, he is handicapped. He is mentally retarded and therefor he acts like a child; as a result, George takes „care“ of him. 

Lennie is a constant character as well as a dynamic character depending on the perspective. Looking at him as an uncontrollable force, in other words a lose canon, we consider his character to be static, because he is constantly messing up things every time. But if you consider his thoughts and look at his actions individually, you will conclude, he is a personality.

At the beginning we never see Lennie‘s thoughts and because of his handicap we never hear him talk much. The impression we get is a quiet and „dumb“ person, who is almost incapable of doing very basic work.

Most of the people do not understand Lennie and therefor they judge him for his actions and his behavior. They do not care about Lennie, they keep their distance or even want to get rid of him.

George seems to be the only person, who has a certain connection to Lennie and understands him, but he actually does not. George is accepting him, but he does not understand him. This becomes clear in situations when George chews him out without considering Lennie‘s motivations.

The person who understands Lennie the most is Slim. Slim, the skinner, has been working with animals for his whole life. He developed a feeling and sensitivity for understanding people‘s or animals‘ thoughts and intentions without words. So he‘s the only person who considers not only Lennie‘s few words but his thoughts and motivations too; thus he‘s the only one who has the ability to understand Lennie.

As a conclusive interpretation we claim that Lennie symbolizes all mentally weak people in society. The author wants to tell us, that the majority treats him like an old useless dog; thinking of old Candy‘s dog. Society doesn‘t care about those people and keeps a distance.

There are few in society who try to help and accept those people, however, they do not understand them completely either. Just some individuals (like Slim) have the ability, patience and empathy, we all should have, to accept and understand shortcomings of people like Lennie.

Greetings (Great)
Adrienne, Jacqueline and Manuel