George and Lennie in Of Mice And Men Essay

Does George need Lennie more or does Lennie need George more?

Have you ever wondered how two people, who are completely different, can have such a good relationship? The perfect example of this can be found in John Steinbeck's classic novel 'Of Mice and Men'. These two characters are George Milton and Lennie Small, two itinerant workers.

Lennie Small is a lanky,skinny man. He is also very strong . He is constantly getting in trouble because he likes to touch things. Like for example in the start of the book in Weed, Lennie saw a beautiful girl in a red dress, he thought the dress was pretty and wanted to touch it. When he grabbed a hold of the dress, the girl pulled away. Lennie's natural reaction was to keep doing it, so thereforeresulted in him getting into bother. All of his relatives are gone,the person who looked after him before was his Auntie Clara. The reason he has to stay with someone all the time is because he disabled and couldn't survive on his own. As Slim says, "Jes like a kid." (Pg44)

George is a loving, yet short-tempered guy. He is always telling off Lennie about doing something wrong or not doing like his mother. Sometimes it's helpful, other times it's not. George can be harsh and impatient sometimes, but he never stops protecting his friend, Lennie. Unlike Lennie, George does change later on in the story. Once he even took advantage of Lennie for his own entertainment. He was on the bank of a river with some of his friends telling them that Lennie would do whatever he told him to do. Well, he knew that Lennie could not swim, but he told him to jump into a river anyways. Lennie listened to him out of trust and almost drowned from it. What did George learn form this incident? He learned not to take advantage of the weak. this made George and Lennie's relationship runbetter. In the beginning of this book George is like and is regarded as better than what he is in reality.

How could George and Lennie, being so different, benefit from each other? For one Lennie is a lot stronger than George. This shows when they are working, because Lennie does far more work than everyone else, he probably does about 3x more work . George does the talking for the two and defends Lennie for everything that he as done in the past. George is also how Lennie makes the few friends he has.

A common question asked is who needs who more?. Does George need Lennie more or does Lennie need George more? George is a pretty small guy and would not have an easy time getting a job unless he had a person like Lennie with him. Maybe George just needs a best friend, someone to help makehis dream, a reality, to keep it alive. Lennie would be an easy person to get along with.

George and Lennies relationship transformed into a jumbled mess by the end of the novel. Lennie was a good friend but really had no change in personality throughout. George was sympathetic for him and as he grew weary of him he also grew sad. George was just as lonely as he was before he killed Lennie.

I guess it is you're decision to decide if George needs Lennie more or Lennie needs George more, but in my opinion, I think that it is George that needs Lennie more. I think this because the emotional aspects are much more important than just his physical ones .