Friendship In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men In john stienbecks novel, one of the themes that have a huge roll in the story and characters is friendship. One of the ways in which friendship plays a large role is in the area of loss, which affects the main characters as well as the supporting ones. The two major losses that occur in the book are Carlson's killing Candys old dog, and George's killing Lennie. In both of these examples, the even though they were both killed, they were killed out of mercy and love, not like the usual motives like hatred, rage, anger, etc.

The killing of Candy's dog is a good example of loss in the throughout the novel. Candy's dog was in terrible condition, and it could be said that the old dog was even alive. It stunk like

Lennie had many problems, both physically and mentally, that held him back from being able to act and talk like normal people. As a result of his mental issues, he neither thought nor acted correctly. Combined with his massive size and strength, he definitely didn't know the limits of his own strength, thus, accidentally killing many helpless animals, simply due to the fact that when they tried to bite him, he would hit them on the head. While this may not be a problem for normal people, Lennie, who’s as strong as a bull, crushed the animals' heads, killing them. Due to his conditions, he had made himself and George lose many job opportunities, as well as get kicked out of many towns. While many of these incidents were not his fault, they still happened, leading to harmful results. He was not cut out to ever be alone; he had to have the instructions of someone else, usually George, to be able to just act around others. Even after getting instructions, he still messed up constantly. By continuing to live like this, he was only going to cause more trouble to himself and the people around him, only to cause much more loss. The rising climax in the story is when Lennie killed Curley's wife. While this was only another accident, one that was Curley's wife’s fault herself. The men on the ranch, particularly Curley, became furious when they found out that the wife of their boss's son had been killed, and decided