The Use Of Power In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

In the novella Of Mice and Men features a variety of characters who all posses a different kind of power and each character’s power has its own origin. Every character also has a different way of using their power and the power they have isn’t always something helpful. Beginning with Lennie, whose power comes from his size and strength. His size and strength make up for the lack of smart. For most of the story Lennie uses his strength for working. Although because of Lennie’s lack of brain he doesn’t know his own strength at times or how to handle a situation where decisions have to be quickly made or to how get himself out of trouble and avoid getting to trouble. His simple mindedness and lack of reason are his faults he can’t help and one small error leads to many more until his own stupidity kills him.

George has used his intelligence to keep him and Lennie alive, and employed. He also uses his leadership gained through his intellectual capacity when Candy finds Curley’s wife died in the barn Candy follows George’s order when he tells him to alert the other guys about Curley’s wife but to make off like he was also just receiving the news to throw suspicion away from him. The book nor movie never directly state where George gets his smarts from, however one can infer he once went to school or his parents taught him, however we can’t be sure. The last time George uses his brain to outsmart somebody was at the end of the book where he first uses Lennie as a scapegoat for the person who stole Carlson’s luger and then used his words to calm Lennie down before shooting him in the back of the head. At the end of the day he knew it was best for Lennie to go out painlessly than to let him suffer for the rest of his