Of Mice and Men- Chapter one
In the beginning of the story you meet George and Lennie, they are two men that we know little about. They are described as one being short and strong and the other tall and over sized. Well we don’t know any of their past so you have to wonder if they have something to hide.
“Awright. You got that. But we’re gonna sleep here because I got a reason” (7).
What is George’s reason for sleeping in the woods? It makes it seem like he has some big secret. Maybe in a way he is trying to protect George is trying to protect Lennie from something. Or maybe he wants to be sure no one from weed is following them.
“I’d pet ‘em, and pretty soon they bit my fingers and I pinched their heads a little and then they was dead – because they was so little” (10).
This shows to me that Lennie doesn’t know his own strength. He doesn’t mean to kill the mice, but it just keeps happening. He wants to be friends with them but when the mice bite him he doesn’t know what else to do. Since he seems to have memory problems he probably can’t remember to not pinch their little heads so hard. Later in the story George tells Lennie that he will get him a dog because they are bigger then mice, and this makes Lennie really excited. I think this shows that George does really care about Lennie.
“When I think of the swell time I could have without you, I go nuts. I never get no peace” (12).
Why doesn’t George just leave Lennie then? He might feel this way but deep down you know that George really has to care for Lennie otherwise he would have left him somewhere by now. George seems very fatherly to Lennie, because he has to look out for him by making sure they have something to eat and that he stays out of trouble. Then there is the aspect of maybe its not so much that he cares about Lennie, maybe he cared about Lennie’s Aunt and had made some sort of promise to her.
