Did George Do The Right Thing By Killing Lennie?

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In John Steinbeck’s novel, Of Mice and Men, an ambiguous question arises on whether George did the right thing by killing Lenny at the end of the story. Some people believe that he did it out of friendship, while at the same time others believe that he did it for his own personal needs. In my personal opinion, I would have to say that he killed Lenny simply out of love for his simple-minded friend. In support of my opinion, I have found many concrete facts throughout the novel that prove it is a legitimate theory. In the following paragraph I further describe my reasoning in depth. The first reason that I believe George did the right thing was due to the circumstances that arose before Lenny’s death. At that time in the novel Lenny had just killed Curely’s wife accidentally because she had nice soft hair. When everyone found out, they immediately knew that Lenny had done it. So together, with the exception of George who left moments before, they set out in search of “their killer”. There is no question that their only motive was to kill him without a trial. My reason for this came right out of Candy’s conversation with George at the first murder scene. He said that “Curley gon’ta wanta get ‘im lynched. Curley’ll get ‘im killed.” Then George replied that Curley’s statement was right and that the other guys would go along with it. The second reason for my option is based on the actual sequence of events that occurred at the Salinas Riverbank. When George got there, Lenny was frantically yelling. For he believed that George was “gonna give ‘im hell”. Lenny kept on using the same phrase that he “should go off and live in a cave somewhere”. This is evidently not logical because George knew that Lenny could not have survived on his own, especially when an angry mob was chasing after him. Therefore, instead of yelling at him he actually did the opposite. He tried to
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