Morally Ambiguous Character In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

In the story, Of Mice and Men, written by John Steinbeck, readers are introduced to many morally ambiguous characters. It all begins with our two main characters, George and Lennie, who are making their way to a ranch to work. Now, Lennie is a large, inane character and George is a smaller, erudite character. They must work on a ranch so they can make enough money to open their own ranch. However, they run into many roaring complications in the working process. The morally ambiguous character that many would identify from reading the book is Lennie. Because he is a hard worker, kills animals and people, and is mentally dependent on George, many see Lennie as a morally ambiguous character.
The first reason Lennie is seen as a morally ambiguous character is because he is a dedicated artisan. Slim and Candy, two characters from the story, always told Lennie how he was such a considerable worker when put to task. In the following example from the story, Slim is talking to George about Lennie.
‘“He’s a nice fella,” said Slim. “Guy don’t need no sense to be a nice fella. Seems to me …show more content…
Of course, readers pay attention to the word, “accidentally” but it is still a problem. Lennie likes to pet small animals, but he always ends up killing them. In the story, George talks about how Lennie used to catch mice at his aunt’s house. However, he would pet them so hard that they would bite him and he would pinch their heads until they died. Another example from the story would be when George and Lennie were making camp on the first night. George caught Lennie with a dead mice in his pocket, in which he was supposedly petting as they walked. Many readers would see this abhorrent thing as very erroneous and evil. However, looking back to the first reason, readers must choose between good and evil, in other words as morally