Have you ever had to make a difficult decision involving family members? In John Steinbeck’s novella Of Mice and Men, the main character, George, is forced to make a hard decision involving family. George killing Lennie in the book was tragic but it had to happen because he didn’t want him to suffer, also if he hadn’t done it Curley would have tortured him, and Lennie was a threat to other people as well. One reason George had to kill Lennie is because he couldn’t watch him suffer if he hadn’t killed him his self. Curley would have wanted to torture and scare Lennie of he had stayed alive. Evidence of this is when Candy told George,” you don’t know Curley. Curley gon’ta wanta get him lynched. Curley gonna get him killed.” (94) This is one …show more content…
Curley was infuriated when he found out his wife had died and was very hostile. In the story he supported his thoughts by saying, “im gonna get him. Im goin for my shotgun. I’ll kill that big son-of-a-bitch myself. I’ll shoot him in the guts. Come on, you guys. This is an even stronger reason why George did the right thing by killing Lennie. Lennie was a kind hearted fellow but he always ended up hurting somebody or killing something, and that’s why George had to do what he did. In the book Lennie killed many mice, a dog, and even a girl at the end, it may have been and accident but it was the fact that he is dangerous. When George says, “I shoulda knew.” In the book he was referring to him knowing it would happen eventually. This is the strongest support to my thesis yet and has a good point to it. Although killing Lennie was the safest most humane thing to do, others may not think as highly of the idea. Killing is a terrible thing and should only be a last resort but on the other hand this situation was pretty serious. He did what he had to, I believe if they had let him live he would have endured more pain and suffering that way. In my opinion George did the right thing by killing him and saving him the pain by letting him go