Of Mice And Men Lennie To Blame Analysis

People today with mental disabilities are often criticized for not being “up to par” with everyone else in the world. This is true especially in the 1920’s, in which the novel Of Mice and Men takes place. Take Lennie Small for example, a large and hefty man, who has a mental disability. He, as a character, is blamed for the heinous act of murdering the antagonist’s wife, whose name is never revealed. It is true that Lennie does fracture her neck, but he does so without knowing. For this reason, along with many others, Lennie is not to blame in any case involving his acts of violence in this novel, because of various, indisputable reasons. These include the red dress incident in Weed, crushing Curley’s hand, and the aforementioned murder of Curley’s wife, all of which prove Lennie’s innocence.
Lennie’s incident in Weed almost cost George and Lennie their lives. The men who heard the girl screaming were going to lynch Lennie. The reason why this happened is because he likes to touch silky materials.

The point of physical violence has not been touched upon. In the midst of the rising action in the novel, Curley starts to beat Lennie because he was grinning at the thought of the ranch, but Curley thought that he was laughing at him. Lennie made a remark that he does not want to fight him. Consequently, Curley assaults Lennie, and he accepts it. It was only at George’s call for permission that Lennie crushed his hand. The men in the bunkhouse defended Lennie. The text states: “‘You told me to George’... ‘I didn’t want to’, Lennie cried. ‘I didn’t want to hurt him.’” (Steinbeck 64). This proves that Lennie is innocent and that Curley is the one who caused his own unfortunate incident in the bunkhouse. The quotation shows that George is even more to blame than Lennie is because George was the one that told him to do it, and that Lennie proclaimed that he did not want to hurt