Is George’s murder of Lennie a justifiable homicide?
Does great power come with great responsibility? Lennie was a very strong guy inside of a 4 year old brain.George was his companion who was in a normal man’s body with an average brain, who was ordered to take care of Lennie by Lennie’s Aunt Clara. But Lennie keeps getting them in trouble everywhere the go to work. Lennie’s pure strength and actions led his best friend George to kill him, so that he doesn’t get in any more trouble. George killing Lennie was a justified murder because Lennie was too dangerous, Lennie would have been killed anyways, and he only would slow George down and drag him into trouble.
Lennie was way too dangerous to be kept alive, because he has no comprehension of his true strength. He was just too mentally challenged to even understand his sheer power. For example, Lennie explains to Curley’s Wife how he unintentionally killed the puppy, “I made it like I was gonna smack him… an I done it. An then he was dead.” (Steinbeck 87). Also Lennie was told to fight back against Curley and simply caught one of Curley’s fists and crushed it with one hand like it was
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They could say that George could have rescued Lennie and ran away from the ranch like he did in weed. This is wrong because George couldn’t live a life of running and saving Lennie from all his mistakes. George wanted to settle down on his own ranch, but he couldn’t do that with Lennie messing up all the time. The opposing viewpoint could also say that Lennie was too good of a worker to be killed. But this is also incorrect because it doesn’t matter how good of a worker he is, if he keeps getting them kicked out of wherever they are. Finally, the opposing side could argue that Aunt Clara told George to take care of Lennie not kill him. This claim is false because Aunt Clara also would not want Lennie to keep on killing people and putting George through a lot of