Do Your Friends Actually Like You Analysis

Whenever something about a friendship is bothering me, I always refer to my definition of friendship. Being a friend is giving as much care, support, understanding, trust, and sacrifice as I can. These characteristics--- care, support, understanding, trust, and sacrifice--- are all foundations of friendship that are supported by “Do Your Friends Actually Like You?” by Kate Murphy, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, and my own personal experience. According to Murphy’s article, friendship is based off of understanding and trust. The article describes friends as “people you take the time to understand allow to understand you” (Murphy 3). Allowing someone to understand you requires trust because without trust, you would not want to be vulnerable to the other person. After the trust is established, understanding is maintained in order to not break the pre-existing trust of the friendship. The article describes a hierarchy of types of friendships as: “The topmost layer consists of only one or two people, say a …show more content…
Lennie and George have made so many sacrifices (of various sizes) for each other. George has sacrificed his “perfect life” in order to help Lennie and to take care of him. George’s sacrifice is probably the greatest of all the sacrifices in Of Mice and Men. At one point in the novel, Lennie tells George that he would give all of his ketchup to George: “I wouldn’t eat none, George. I’d leave it all for you. You could cover your beans with it and I wouldn’t touch none of it” (Steinbeck 12). Lennie loves ketchup on his beans, and even though Lennie’s sacrifice of not having any ketchup is small, it is enough for Lennie and George. These simple sacrifices for Lennie are a lot because Lennie is a little kid mentally. Imagine a small child who loves candy saying that s/he will give up all of his/her candy to get a person to stay with him/her. For that small child, all of that candy is a