A person who committed a crime despite their mental ability or age should be punished. Imagine two people kill somebody but one of them is mentally disabled. Do they deserve the same punishment? They both should be held accountable for their actions. In John Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men, this question comes up in terms of whenever Lennie should have been killed for his crime. Ultimately, George should have killed Lennie because he had a history of violence, he was mentally unstable, and he didn’t know how to take care of himself. First, Lennie had a history with violence. He started off with killing the mice, then the girls dress. “Hell no. He just scared her. I’d be scared too, if he grabbed me. He just wanted to touch that red dress, like he wants to pet the pups all the time." (Steinbeck 42) That is an example of his past, and why they were run out of Weed. Or, this one is “Trouble with mice is you always kill em.” (Steinbeck 13) At the end of the day, he doesn’t know his own strength. He ended up killing his puppy and Curley’s wife. To follow up with that, the idea …show more content…
American Association on Mental Retardation (AAMR) as “significantly subaverage intellectual functioning exiting with deficits in behavior developed during the development period.”( Mental Retardation 1) Not, only was Lennie mentally disabled, but he was mentally unstable. After Lennie ran away he started seeing things. His Aunt Clara popped up and yelling at him. There was also a talking bunny telling him, how disappointed George would be. “ ‘I tol’ you an’ tol’ you. ‘Min’ George because he’s such nice fella an’ good to you. But you don’t never take no care. You do bad things.’ And Lennie answered her. “ ‘I tried, Aunt clara, ma’am. I tried and tried. I couldn’ help it.’ “ (Steinbeck 101) The pain, and shock after realizing what he just did was causing him to see things, he wished were