Lennie's Vulnerability

Loyalty Leads to Total Annihilation The word loyal is defined as being “faithful to any lender, party, or cause, or to any person or thing conceived as deserving fidelity.” This concept often has a positive connotation supporting it. Nonetheless, the novel Of Mice and Men depicts this quality quite negatively through its two main characters. George Milton and Lennie Small, who have a tremendously strong father-son relationship, constantly travel from place to place in order to keep the latter safe, as Lennie’s disability always causes him to get into trouble. The reader sees George’s great faithfulness towards Lennie and his devotion to keeping the handicapped man safe, which constantly uproots his life and causes it to be in an incessant

Being utterly true to someone is shown to be a great burden in the novel Of Mice and Men, especially as it leads to the eternal unhappiness George. The book constantly has the readers asking themselves the question, what does it mean to truly be loyal to someone? On multiple occasions, George answers this query as he prioritizes Lennie over himself, whether the results are positive or negative. To begin with, the novel opens with the dynamic duo rushing for safety after Lennie allegedly raped a woman in their old town. Due to Lennie’s inability to comprehend stressful situations and control himself, George has had to live under terrible conditions. Therefore, because he is so loyal to Lennie, George drops everything good in his life and moves on to much worse things to keep Lennie safe. Furthermore, this constant cycle caused by both Lennie’s disability and George’s faithfulness is shown to be taking a toll on the latter’s mental health. George has clear anger issues and, on multiple occasions, has intense outbursts at Lennie. This quotation demonstrates that even George understands the fact that if he was not so

George sacrifices his morality and emotional well-being for Lennie by killing him. To further explain, George crying preceding Lennie’s shooting, shown by his mispronunciation of words such as family, signals his wretched state and the beginning of his emotional downfall. This ruination is caused by George not having an actual choice of not killing Lennie, as he is so attached to the disabled character that he can not bring himself to see Lennie go through all the agony Curley would have caused him. In this case, it can be presumed that George does not want to kill Lennie, judging by the former’s past actions. Even during the moment of the murder, George is constantly hesitating from the being so emotional and unwilling to end Lennie’s life. Notwithstanding, George kills Lennie and is left immensely distraught. This quotation shows how traumatized George is after seeing his best friend die right in front of him, especially since he had caused it. The reader can infer that George’s devotion to Lennie will last even after Lennie’s death and that George will never move on. Coupled with this fact, the situation is made even more sorrowful as the reader realizes that George, due to Lennie, once and for all shut his window of opportunity to