Oh, for Mercy’s Sake! Taking someone’s life is nearly impossible to justify; circumstances have to be extreme, and conditions have to be awful. In John Steinbeck’s novella, Of Mice and Men, George had to make a tough decision when he killed his best friend, Lennie, to save him from a more painful death. The story takes place during the Great Depression in California, and follows two unlikely friends, Lennie, an extremely strong yet mentally disabled man, and George, who is much smarter and the leader of the two. George and Lennie are migrant workers, and after losing their previous job, have come a ranch to find work. When caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, Lennie accidentally murders a woman, because he is unaware of his own strength …show more content…
But by keeping Lennie alive, there was the chance he would end up in jail where he would be treated harshly, which would make him miserable. However, George cared deeply for Lennie and wanted the best for him, so he was able to put his own dreams on hold so he could take care of his companion. More recently, John Wise, a loving husband, shot his hospitalized wife, who was in pain and it was most likely she would not recover. Paul Adamson, his lawyer, said in Wise’s defense, “She hadn’t verbalized anything, but I think it’s fair to say he felt for the first time he was making some connection with her, and what he saw was agony, desperation and pain […] and he knew that he had to do something” (Qtd. in Rivera). Here, John Wise saved his wife similarly to George saving Lennie, and in both, the deaths are clearly out of love. John’s wife, Barbara, was in a condition she no longer wanted to suffer through, so John picked up the cues, and did what he thought needed to be done. Likewise, knowing that Lennie would react negatively to being in a jail, George killed him to make sure it would not happen. In both of these examples, the deaths were right because they are out of sympathy and humanity for the victim, to take them out of their misery and to a better place than their current