Innocence In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

When one thinks of innocence people often think of harmless, adorable, cuddly small things however innocence is not as simple or straightforward as it would seem. In Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men he uses the innocence of Lennie to show how people in general don’t mean to cause problems but often do.
To begin with, the lack of understanding for the people who don’t intend to cause trouble is challenging for those around them. Like George for example when he tells Lennie “God you’re a lot of trouble I could get along so easy and so nice if I didn’t have you on my tail. I could live so easy and maybe have a girl” (Steinbeck 7). George is frustrated because he wants a perfect life like a wife, kids, a dog, some livestock but he can’t ever have that. He doesn’t want to leave Lennie because he cares too much for him and couldn’t imagine life without him no matter how bad Lennie is. This is often the case in life. For example a little kid in a store, runs away to look at something shiny, while mother calls the police in frantic worry because she thinks her child has been taken. The child didn’t intend to cause harm but the child doesn’t have the mental

In the bunkhouse the other men are making fun of Curley and Lennie is just happily sitting there thinking about the dream. Curley sees Lennie smiling and he thinks that Lennie is laughing at him so Curley decides to take a swing at Lennie. “Lennie gave a cry of terror…’George’, he cried ‘make um let me alone George’” (Steinbeck 63). Because of Lennie’s innocence he has no idea what the other men in the room are talking about and he is targeted because Curley thinks that Lennie was a part of the conversation. Imagine a group of boys going down the hall one gets bumped into, being hard headed he thinks that the other guy did it on purpose so he decides that he is going to give him a shove and each boy thinks the other one started it and then it’s on like donkey