George's Decision To Kill Lennie Essay

In the short story, Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, George did the right thing by killing Lennie. If he hadn’t, who knows what kind of pain and torture Lennie would’ve been through. In the story, Lennie had murdered Curley’s wife by accident, they knew he had done it because of a quote provided by Slim, “I guess Lennie done it all right, Her necks bust. Lennie coulda did that.” Lennie had gotten angry at her for screaming when he was petting her hair and held onto her neck for too long. Afterwards, he had ran away to hide in the brush, where George had told him to wait if he was ever in trouble. George was left to clean up Lennie’s mess but no matter what, there was no hope in saving Lennie, due to Curley and the other ranch hands being dead set of killing or torturing Lennie. George knew what had to be done, in order to make sure that Lennie wasn’t going to be in anymore pain and that he would be given peace provided by a quote from George, …show more content…
George didn’t kill Lennie out of anger or hatred but out of love. He tried to reason with Curley by saying “But listen, Curley. The poor bastards nuts. Don’t shoot ‘im. He didn’t know what he was doin’.” George believed that if he didn’t do it, then Lennie would have suffered greatly because of the quote in the novel from Curley, “I’m gonna shoot the guts outa that big bastard myself, even if I only got one hand. I’ gonna get ‘im.” Lennie would have suffered a lot more if Curley and the other ranch hands would’ve gotten to him rather than George calmly talking to him and ending it within a second without Lennie even knowing it or feeling any pain. Throughout the entire story George has always taken care of Lennie and made sure that Lennie was safe and taken care of, so It only makes sense that he would be the one to comfort Lennie in the last minutes of his life before passing