Of Mice and Men Essay-a Comparison Between Lennie and Candy

On pages 63 to 65, Lennie struggles internally over his own unrealized strength. After Lennie crushed Curley’s hand, Lennie sat cowering in the corner. He’s scared that he did something wrong but he never meant to hurt Curley. He only fought back because George told him to. George and Slim assured George that it wasn’t his fault and that he didn’t do a bad thing. On pages 44 to 48, Candy undergoes a personal struggle. When Carlson tells him that his dog is old and suffering and should be put down, Candy does not want to give up his dog. After Slim agreed that Candy’s dog should be put down on page 45, “Candy looked helplessly at him, for Slim’s opinions were law.” After being defeated by Carlson’s reasonable argument, Candy finally forces himself to give up his dog, knowing that he won’t have to suffer any more.

George even uses Lennie’s need as leverage to keep him under control. Lennie strives to hold responsibility. Unfortunately, Lennie tends to hurt the animals that he does receive. He is too strong for the animals that she cares for. During their journey from Weed, Lennie tends to a mouse, only to end up killing the fragile creature. Later on, George gets Lennie a puppy that Lennie regretfully kills with his power. Lennie’s good intentions fell short in comparison to his power. Lennie was looking for responsibility in pets but took on too much when the animals would be killed by his overwhelming strength.

Steinbeck portrays Lennie to be very careless and irresponsible through the death of the mouse, the puppy and Curley’s wife. The death of the mouse foreshadows the death of the puppy and the death of Curley’s wife. Through the death of the mouse we see how Lennie is irresponsible for his actions. “They was so little,” he said apologetically. This shows that Lennie is taking

Lennie and Candy’s dog are parallel. Candy’s dog is old, stinky, it cant take care of itself and he’s useless. Lennie cant take care of himself of others, and when he gets scared he holds on to whatever hes got. Candy’s dog had to be put down, just like Lennie. They were also killed the same way. “If you want me to, I’ll put the old devil out of his misery right now and get it over with. Ain’t nothing left for him. Can’t eat, can’t see, can’t even walk without hurtin’” (48). In this scene Carlson took Candy’s dog out and shot him. Though Candy did not want his dog to be dead, he still went through with it. This is just like when George went to kill Lennie, he didn’t want too but it had to be

The first reason why George is justified in killing Lennie is because Lennie is worthless like Candy’s dog. Candy’s dog is causing trouble for the men, and suffering while it's still alive “Ain’t nothing left for him. Can’t eat, can’t see, can’t even walk without hurtin’( Steinbeck 47). Like Lennie, the dog is physically impaired. The dog can hardly walk and Lennie has some trouble moving around. Lennie is worthless, because he does

In the Salinas River Valley, after the Great Depression, there were a large number of unemployed workers seeking jobs. In the fiction novel "Of Mice and Men," by John Steinbeck, Lennie Small is among one of those men. Lennie and his friend George both have just received jobs on a ranch as farm workers. What brings the two together is their dream to someday own their own land. Lennie has a lot of character and personality traits that define him. One trait that he has is he is very forgetful. Another trait he has is he is very curious. A final trait he has is that he is very reliant. Although he might not be the intelligent person in the book, he has a very well developed personality. Lennie demonstrates his personality and character

Steinbeck fully develops the animal comparison at the end of the novel by drawing a parallel between Candy and his old dog and George and dog-like Lennie. Like Candy's useless old dog, after the incident with

Candy 's dog and Lennie share many characteristics by their disabilities. Both struggle through life and worry the people who care about them. While Lennie has a childish mind and is socially inept, needing George to constantly lecture him, the dog suffers from his own health and needs to be taken care of by Candy, unable to help on the ranch.

Through the narrative convention of foreshadowing, Steinbeck uses the execution of Candy’s dog to predict what will occur to Candy himself, once his ability to work diminishes completely. Candy’s dog is a metaphor of himself. The dog represents the brutality of life on the land and the inevitability of becoming useless.

John Ernst Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California on February 27, 1902. He worked as a farm labourer on ranches from 1919 to 1926. This experience has influenced the setting of the novella Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck met someone like Lennie Small which obviously provided Lennie’s character. I am going to compare the events in which Candy’s dog and Lennie die in the novella. I will also talk about how John Steinbeck made the events effective for the reader. There are several themes in the novella Of Mice and Men. These are loyalty, friendship, loneliness and isolation, dreams of something

The killing of Candy's dog deepened his loneliness, just as the killing of Lennie totally destroyed George. Since the dog was Candy's best friend, its death was drastic to him. Candy was rejected by the society because he was old and had only one arm. He was useless to it; therefore they did not care about his feelings. Also, since he was weak no one cared about him and he could not do anything about it. A stronger person like Slim had the respect of everyone and this forced the society to listen to them. Candy was deeply saddened by this, and this was shown when he said "You seen what they done to my dog tonight? They say he wasn't no good to himself nor nobody else."(Pg.60). Then he said "When they can me here I wished somebody'd shoot me. But they won't do anything like that. I won't have no place to go an' I can't get no more jobs."(Pg.60). This showed that Candy was hopeless and had no place to go. Without his dog, he was now alone.

The story “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck is one of the winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature. “Of Mice and Men” is about two characters George and Lennie. George is very smart but short. Lennie on the other hand is the complete opposite. He is big and has a mind of a child. In “Of Mice and Men” George and Lennie have a dream to own a piece of land somewhere in California. In this story Lennie is being made sympathetic by Steinbeck so then the story is more relatable. Steinbeck is doing this by showing Lennie to have some mental problems and also to make him act like a child in a manly ranch in California.

This theme also appears in Of Mice and Men. Lennie, throughout the story, is known to like to pet soft things, but he accidently kills small animals from petting them too hard. Despite this, George says that when they get enough money to buy a house together, he will let Lennie tend the rabbits. Throughout the story, Lennie constantly asks George to repeat to him the story of getting a house with rabbits that he will be in charge of. One of the coworkers of Lennie and George complains to his boss, Candy, that his dog is old, crippled, and no longer useful, so he suggests that he shoots the dog to put it out of its misery while Candy gets a puppy from one of the workers (Steinbeck 45). Two workers go outside and shoot the dog while Candy lays down silently looking at the ceiling (Steinbeck 47-50). After a while, Candy asks Lennie and George if he could pay for some of the cost of the house, and in exchange, he could tend the house. Candy goes on to explain that the reason he

This affected the story by making the audience really sad when they killed his dog. If he hadn’t been seen as a vulnerable person then Candy could have stopped them from killing his dog. That wouldn’t have made the audience sad. After becoming sad the audience would start to see how bad Candy is treated because of his age and understand how the discrimination was. It also affected the story by putting Candy in a mindset of wanting to get out of there, so he proposes to join George and Lennie in buying the little house. This pretty much sealed the deal for the house, until Lennie killed Curley’s wife.

Like Candy, Candy’s dog is faced with the ultimate punishment for his age and disability. Candy’s dog is old and said to smell bad and isn’t worth anything, the dog is shot because of its disabilities. This event foreshadows Lennie’s fate at the hand of George. Both of these characters’ euthanasia is rationalized to put them out of their misery and to prevent future suffering from happening due to their disabilities. Which is almost a mirror image of George and Lennie’s relationship where George has known Lennie for a considerable amount of time and George knows that he is completely responsible of Lennie’s well-being and when that well-being is in jeopardy George feels a moral obligation just like Candy did when he gave permission to Carlson to shoot his dog. The euthanizing of Candy’s dog is a “foreshadowing of what will happen with Lennie and George” (Thomas Scarseth) because both Candy and George’s relationship to those dependent to them end with them killing them in order to save them from suffering.