George And Lennie's Relationship Essay

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How does Steinbeck present the relationship between George and Lennie in the novel? The relationship between George and Lennie is vital to the development and understanding of “Of Mice and Men”. Set in America’s depression of the 1930s, where relationships were difficult to sustain, Lennie’s dependence upon George, and George’s responsibility towards Lennie puts them both in a precarious personal situation. As the plot develops, the reader discovers how both characters deal with their relationship with one another. The first time we are introduced to Lennie and George together, we soon notice lots of different ways in which Lennie copies George, for example, walking behind him. “They had walked single file down the path, and even in the open one stayed behind the other” pge2. The way in which Lennie generally copies George’s actions clearly shows the fact that Lennie has a child-like manner. The author reinforces this fact when Lennie and George reach the “green pool” because George acts as a parental figure towards Lennie…show more content…
Crooks begins to antagonise Lennie, saying things such as, “Le’s say he wants to come back but he can’t. S’pose he gets killed or hurt so he can’t come back.” and, “ jus’ s’pose he don’t come back. What’ll you do then?” In the beginning these thoughts just confused Lennie, which highly amused Crooks. However, when Crooks continued to antagonise Lennie, Lennie became angry with Crooks. We see this when the author uses “he demanded” instead of, “he said”. When the author describes Lennie going back to his seat as Lennie “growled” back to his seat, the author used animal imagery creating and impression of danger and threat. These actions of show that Lennie feels protective towards George, and doesn’t want anyone to hurt him. He may also feel afraid of what might happen to him should Crooks’ taunts come
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