Sacrifice For Men In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

Of Mice and Men is the story of the relationship between two men, George, and Lennie, a mentally handicapped man. The two men travel together, and although Lennie is sometimes a burden to him, George looks out for him and stays with him through trying times. The men are very close, but in the end, George kills Lennie to save him from the people chasing him. For George, this was a terrible thing to have to do, and a sacrifice on his part- he lost his best friend and had to live with the guilt of having killed him. Through this novel, Steinbeck teaches us that if we are looking out for someone else, we sometimes have to make difficult sacrifices for their benefit. George makes many large sacrifices throughout this book, the first of which being giving up a good

One day, Lennie saw a girl in a red cotton dress and wanted to touch it., so he reached out and grabbed the dress. When the girl started screaming, afraid of the big man in front of her, Lennie panicked and would not let go of the dress: “George carefully built his line of solitaire cards. ‘Well, that girl rabbits in an’ tells the law she been raped. The guys in Weed start a party out to lynch Lennie. So we sit in a irrigation ditch under water all the rest of that day. Got on’y our heads sticking outa water, an’ up under the grass that sticks out from the side of the ditch. An’ that night we scrammed outa there.’” When they lived in Weed, George and Lennie had a pretty good life. When Lennie got in trouble, George had a two options. He could help Lennie escape, or he could just stay in Weed, and let Lennie pay for his own mistakes. Leaving Lennie seems to be the simpler option of the two. George could take his money for himself and live how he wanted to, with nothing holding him back. He chooses, however, to follow Lennie, and helps him because he knew he wasn’t competent enough to escape on his own.