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Good Intentions In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

696 Words3 Pages

“There are no purely bad people in it. Conversely, there are no purely good people in it either. All the characters are complex mixtures of good and bad, or rather of bad results from good intentions. They are all—in their ability and in their outlook--limited. And they live in a gross and dirty world.” Good intentions cannot always lead to a good outcome. Very often the path a person may be stuck on simply does not have a good end, and it may be impossible to swerve off into a different path. In George’s and Lennie’s case, they were limited by a society which would not cooperate with many people, there would be people who would be looking for trouble. This quote plays a theme during the entire novella, especially in Lennie’s character. After …show more content…

One’s fantasies usually end up as just that, fantasies. In Of Mice and Men both Lennie and George have the same fantasy, one which seems great and to an extent even seems achievable, but due to the nature of Lennie and George, it simply cannot be reached. These limitations range anywhere from Lennie’s lack of intelligence and excessive strength to the scarcity of jobs in the area. Although both George and Lennie truly believed in their dream and did their best to achieve it, it was just not reachable. Sadly, these limitations are not always visible to the human eye, this means people will work hard, and work for a long time when a path will only ever lead them back to the same spot where they were before. This theme is seen through the entire novella, George and Lennie end up the same way the book started, Lennie’s lack of self-control caused Lennie to make a mistake once again, and again it made Lennie’s life be threatened. Lennie’s and George’s dream was not an uncommon neither, as Crooks states, "I seen hunderds of men come by on the road an ' on the ranches, with their bindles on their back an ' that same damn thing in their heads. Hunderds of them. They come, an ' they quit an ' go on; an ' every damn one of 'em 's got a little piece of land in his head. An ' never a God damn one of 'em ever gets it.", and by the end of the novella, both George and Lennie are doomed to the same fate as anyone who has had the same dream as them(74). Just as anyone in this age as time, their fantasies were limited by

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