“In a certain state it is indecent to live longer”, Friedrich Nietzsche. Sometimes euthanasia is the best option for someone or something that does not know how to live, although some see it as murder. In the book Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, George, the protagonist, kills his best friend, Lennie. While some see it as a murder of a human life, in reality it is just George euthanizing Lennie for his own good.
George did not murder Lennie because he saw how Candy felt after someone else killed his dog, and George didn’t want to go through the same situation. Although some may argue that George murdered Lennie, but this cannot be true. They say it was murder because George wants the burden of Lennie off his back. George knew what he was
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The first reason that it was euthanasia and not murder was that George had Lennie’s best interest in mind. George got to Lennie first so George could make it quick and easy. George also was telling Lennie about the farm they were going to buy after working for a month or two. George goes into more detail about how Lennie is going to take care of the rabbits, which is what he was most excited about. To elaborate on the fact that George got there first was the best result for Lennie. If the other men found Lennie first there is no telling how or what they were going to do to Lennie. They could have made his death a lot more painful and could have even tortured him. George was also thinking about how Candy said he would have rather shot his own dog rather than someone else do it. As stated before Lennie is compared to and referenced to being an animal throughout the book so in a way Lennie was George’s dog and George wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if he saw Lennie suffer before he died. Lastly George wanted to rid Lennie of his cycle of finding a new object he likes to touch and stroke, and then killing it. Much like an animal that is being euthanized for being vicious and attacking other dogs or even humans, George had the same thought in his mind and didn’t want other people or Lennie to suffer anymore from the death of their animals. An example of Lennie being to vicious with animals is his puppy that George said he could have, George said he could have a puppy and Lennie just kept playing and petting it to hard and that eventually killed