Of Mice And Men Morally Wrong

Is it morally right to kill someone? Could you do it? In the book Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, there are two best friends: Lennie and George. The two men search for work in the depression of California. Lennie was a strong man, however, he had a mental disability that made it hard for him to think for himself and control his actions. George, on the other hand, was a mentally sharp person and had to act as a guardian figure for Lennie throughout the places that they’ve previously worked. After a few days of working at a ranch, Lennie lost control of his actions, yet again, killing Curley’s wife. When the other workers found out, they decided to go out and kill Lennie. George found him in a spot on a hill and killed him before the lynch …show more content…
When talking about the bad things that Lennie has done, George states,”All the time he done bad things, but he never done one of ‘em mean” (Steinbeck 95). George was explaining to Candy about how Lennie did bad things all the time but, since he couldn’t control his actions, he didn’t mean any of them. In this particular case, Lennie had just killed Curley’s wife and George and Candy found out. George figured that Lennie had just wanted to touch her soft hair and yanked too hard. This showed that George did the appropriate thing by killing Lennie because Lennie had, yet again, lost control of his actions and hurt yet another person. George knew that this would cause problems for both him and Lennie so he decided to put Lennie to death. When preparing to shoot Lennie, George had a thought to himself,” If I was alone I could live so easy. I could get a job an’ not have no mess” (Steinbeck 103). Realizing the consequences of what Lennie had done because he could not control his actions before, George realized that there was no hope for Lennie and that he had to shoot him. This was the right thing to do because if he had not done this, Lennie would have continued to lose control and create more problems, especially for