Lennie In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

Acting out and performing a character’s role in a play is already difficult enough to begin with. But to be able to portray that character in front of hundreds of people, now that’s impressive. The Springer Opera House did just that with the character Lennie Smalls in one of their reenactments of “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck. While sitting there and watching the play, I could really feel the amount of work put into trying to portray Lennie as close as possible to the version in the book. First of all, let’s talk about his size. Now in the novella, Steinbeck explains and introduces Lennie as this rather large, shapeless man with large, pale eyes and extremely broad shoulders with arms hanging loosely by his side as he walked. The character

In the book, Lennie is seen as this child-like man with a lower level of intelligence that just doesn’t know what’s happening around him. He is mentally handicapped and has no ability to understand abstract concepts like right from wrong. He does not intentionally do the things that he gets into trouble for but when he does, he is unable to understand the consequences of his actions. Lennie only defines his terms of consequences by whether or not George is “going to give me hell” or “George isn’t gonna let me tend to the rabbits no more”. He is often clueless of his actions and gets into various amounts of trouble because of this. The actor, Zach Curtis, did a fantastic job with the portrayal of Lennie. Firstly, Curtis speaks in a way one that is mentally handicapped would. He often talks with slurred speech and stutters many his words. He implies varying emotions and tonal forms into his speech, emphasizing the horror or cluelessness that Lennie experiences in his times of trouble. Every aspect of his acting, from the way he talks and walks and even to the way he eats his beans, resembles that of Lennie and his child like