Characterization In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men tells a story of two migrant workers who unceasingly dream for a better life. The characters within the novella make tough and insensitive decisions based on popular assumptions, past lessons, and their personal views of life and death. Steinbeck incorporates characterization, irony, and foreshadow into this heavy-hearted story of male companionship to develop its theme that people have the tendency to accept their personal perception as reality and disregard what is truly in front of them.
Since the beginning of the story, Steinbeck utilizes characterization through Lennie, a big and dim character, and his actions to support the theme. Because of his appearance, Lennie is villainized by some of the men from

In the beginning of the story, the mouse Lennie keeps in his pocket dies, and he whines for a new one from the same woman that he cannot remember. “That was your own Aunt Clara,” George says, “An’ she stopped givin’ ‘em to ya. You always killed ‘em.” Whether or not this Aunt Clara knew of Lennie’s mental disability, she had to stop giving him mice because he had trouble keeping them alive. It is obvious that unintentional killings may occur with the blood on Lennie’s hands due to this foreshadow. Also, George always felt he had to keep a close eye on Lennie incase anything bad happened to him, or because of him. Unfortunately, he could only do it for so long. To elaborate, when George finds Lennie sitting alone he says, “I want you to stay with me, Lennie. Jesus Christ, somebody’d shoot ya for a coyote if you was by yourself.” However, later in the story, Lennie is shot to death after he runs out of George’s sight and sits alone at the river. As stated before, Carlson’s reason for shooting the dog was “he’s no good to himself,” influenced George’s ultimate decision about putting Lennie down because of his flaw. In combination, George connects Lennie’s disability with this perception of life and accepts the reality of the entire issue: Lennie’s disability makes him uncontrollably dangerous, so he needs to be put down now before someone else