Lennie Small Essay

Lennie Small: A Big Influence on the Theme of Of Mice and Men Out of all the books regarding marginalized groups that students must read, Of Mice and Men, a realistic fiction novella by John Steinbeck, is a unique one; it features a mentally ill main character. This novella is about George, a small, thoughtful man, and Lennie, a large, mentally ill man, and how marginalization and the Great Depression make them struggle for their dreams. From this, a theme can be drawn about the novella: marginalization greatly limits people’s ability to be themselves. Lennie, who is big, lumbering, impulsive, dependent on George, and marginalized because of his mental illness, helps the reader see this theme through the events of the novella. In Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck indicates that Lennie is marginalized with indirect characterization to imply the theme, “marginalization greatly limits people’s ability to be …show more content…
Because Lennie is marginalized, George has to make a difficult, life-changing decision. The reader can see this in a conversation between George and Curley: “‘But listen, Curley. The poor bastard’s nuts. Don’t shoot ‘im. He di’n’t know what he was doin’.’ ‘Don’t shoot ‘im?’ Curley cried. ‘He got Carlson’s Luger. ‘Course we’ll shoot ‘im’” (Steinbeck 98). As shown in this quote, at first, George did not want to kill Lennie, but eventually does. The other workers did not try to understand why Lennie might have killed Curley’s Wife or his point of view; this shows how mentally ill people were marginalized at the time. George is forced by these people to consider and do something he would not even have thought of doing. As discussed, the marginalization of Lennie and mentally ill people as a whole directly and intensely affected the choice George made. Ultimately, it kept characters through the whole novella from being themselves and making their own