Mental Illness In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

“If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it” - Mary Engelbreit. This is how society should think about things that are different or people that are different. For example society often overlooks mental illness and turns it away. Prison staff mistreat inmates with mental illness sometimes; they are more likely to be isolated in harsh conditions. “Prisons have become the nation’s primary mental health facilities,” said Jamie Fellner, director of Human Rights Watch’s U.S. Program and a co-author of the report” (hrw.org). But for those with serious illnesses, prison can be the worst place to be.”This could be because of a lack of education or just purely because people don’t want to accept differences.

While it is obvious to the reader that Lennie has a disability because of his actions, it is never directly stated. However, when Lennie is petting one of the puppies that was born on the farm, he says to the puppy, “why do you got to get killed? You ain’t so little as mice. I didn’t bounce you hard” (Steinbeck 85), it is clear that Lennie does not understand that you are supposed to be gentle with puppies, even after George has told him to be careful with the puppies. After Lennie killed the puppy, the lonely wife of the owner of the farm that Lennie and George work on comes into the barn to see that Lennie has killed the puppy, they then talk and she invites Lennie to stroke her hair, Lennie then gets too rough and hangs onto her hair and she says, “Let go. You let go!” (Steinbeck 91), he then panics and snaps her neck by accident. Even though the author does not directly say that it was by accident I know it was, because Lennie was only trying to cover her mouth so she wouldn’t scream and she kept trying to fight back; Lennie was trying to cover her mouth because he did not want to get in trouble with George. This shows Lennie did not learn from killing the puppy just minutes before and did not understand to let go when she got mad at him for being too rough. All of these examples show how society was ignorant

In the novella Of Mice and Men, society is not educated about mentally challenged people such as Lennie, thus making society slow to change because of the lack of knowledge. As talked about in the previous paragraph where Lennie killed the wife of the owner of the farm him and George are working on, this leads to all of the people on the farm going on a search for Lennie to kill him. The owner of the farms son Curley says, “I’m gonna get him. I’m going for my shotgun. I’ll kill the big son-of-a-bitch myself. I’ll shoot him in the guts. Come on, you guys” (Steinbeck 96). This shows that they are not aware that Lennie is mentally challenged because of lack of knowledge in the 1930’s therefore they hold Lennie fully accountable for killing her, even though he was not aware of what he was doing. If there was more knowledge of mental illness in the 1930’s there could have been programs for Lennie to watch him so that things like that won’t happen. In the beginning of the novella George briefly talks about how they got run out of the town where their old job was, because Lennie touched a girl’s dress because he likes to touch soft things, and when she got mad he panicked and held on tight and would not let go. After Lennie did this the town sent out a lynch mob for Lennie. Again because of the lack of knowledge, they held him fully accountable for doing that. These examples all show how Lennie is not