Mental Illnesses In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

In today’s society, there are many people living with mental illnesses. As a matter of fact, every year about 42.5 million American adults suffer from a mental illness, with conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. In the novella Of Mice and Men, written by John Steinbeck, Lennie is a character who has a mental illness. Because Lennie has a mental illness and most likely could not take care of himself, another man named George takes care of him after Lennie’s aunt's death. The novel takes place during the Great Depression. During this time period in the early 1900s, many people disliked and sloughed others who had mental illnesses. As a result, George had to make sure nobody would find out he had a mental illness. The mental illness that Lennie has is not specified in the book, however, the reader knows that Lennie has some kind of mental illness because Steinbeck puts many examples of Lennie's mental retardation throughout the novel.

An example of this from the novel is in chapter 1, when Lennie was playing with the water. “Lennie dabbled his big paw in the water and wiggled his fingers so the water arose in little splashes; rings widened across the pool on the other side and came back again. Lennie watched them go. "Look, George. Look what I done."” (Steinbeck 3) From this quote we can infer that Lennie acts childish and innocent because of his mental illness, as playing with your hands in water is usually something that little kids think is fun. We can also tell that Lennie is excited and wants George to see what he did. This is another thing that many children do with