Comparing The Characters In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

Of Mice and Men is a book about an unusual friendship, loyalty, and loneliness. The author, John Steinbeck, shows many different personalities and different ways of life through the characters. Although each character is different in their own way, they all share one common thing: they show no emotion when violence is taking place. The characters in Of Mice and Men are desensitized to violence shown by the emotions running when Curley and Lennie fight, Curley’s wife’s death, and when George makes the decision to shoot Lennie.

When Curley fights Lennie, it shows desensitization because of the way the other characters react to the bloody fight. “Curley stepped over to Lennie like a terrier. “What the hell you laughin’ at?” Lennie looked blankly

“Candy asked “What are we gonna do now, George? What we gonna do now?” George was a long time in answering. “Guess… we gotta tell the… guys. I guess we gotta get ‘im an’ lock ‘im up. We can’t let ‘im get away. Why the poor [man’d] starve to death.”’(Steinbeck 94) When Lennie flees the scene after he strangles Curley’s wife, some of the other men see her dead. Curley does not care that his wife is dead, he just wants to brutally kill Lennie now. “I’m gonna get him. I’m going for my shotgun. I’ll shoot ’im in the guts.” (Steinbeck 96) The other characters do not try to stop Curley from being violent, they even help him. Slim, Carlson, and George are all about to help Curley murder Lennie, and none of them show any sympathy or pause to think about what they are going to do to Lennie, who once was their

“And George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it close to the back of Lennie’s head.” (Steinbeck 106) At the moment when George steadies the gun, he made a choice. He decided that he would shoot his best friend in the back of his head rather than save him and go somewhere else. He would rather have Lennie’s blood on his hands and the disturbing memory of his best friend dead because of him. Not many people today would do this. This action of a man killing his best friend with no shake of his hand and not a second thought about what he was doing shows that violence no longer affects him. The other men, Curley, Slim, and Carlson, do not care that Lennie was lying dead with a bullet in the back of his head.

The characters in of Mice and Men have been around so much violence that they are desensitized to it shown when Curley fights Lennie, when Lennie kills Curley’s wife, and the death of Lennie. Curley’s wife’s death and Lennie’s death both show how none of the characters care about them dying and go along like it is a regular day. When something happens that the people in this book do not know how to handle, they want to resolve the issue with more