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What Do You Think Steinbeck Says About the Theme of Friendship in of Mice and Men?

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What do you think Steinbeck says about the theme of friendship in Of Mice and Men? Of Mice and Men describes the life of a man and his best friend who has the mentality of a child. Their friendship is very strong and this is surprising, “it jus’ seems kinda funny a cuckoo like him and a smart little guy like you travelin’ together”, and this is due to the other characters in the book being implied as very lonely. Every time George and Lennie obtain a job, Lennie gets in trouble and they are forced to leave. But they hope after all of their intense work that they can finally have their dream and get a place that they can call their own, “we’re gonna have a little house and a couple acres”. George Milton and Lennie Small are the …show more content…

George steals Carlson’s gun – a ranch worker and blames it on Lennie. George thinks that if anyone is to kill Lennie it should be him. George sets out and goes to the river that was the setting at the start of the book. He finds Lennie and reassuringly talks to him about the place they are going to get to their selves when they have enough money. George tells Lennie about the rabbits he is going to be able to have and their couple of acres of ground. Lennie as usual gets excited about this and cannot tell that anything is different. At this point in time George is still acting as if everything is fine and that their friendship is as strong as ever. George having the gun tries to shoot Lennie many times before he actually does so, “George raised the gun and his hand shook, and he dropped his hand to the round again.” He cannot bring himself to do it as they’ve been friends for so long. Loneliness rules the end of the novel as George had been a character with support throughout the novel but now he has murdered Lennie and therefore he doesn’t have someone he can properly trust. When the workers find George they assume that he got the gun off Lennie and shot him in self-defense so only Slim really knows what has happened. Slim is the only one that really understands the friendship between George and Lennie and this is significant at the novels ending, “Never you mind. A guy got to sometimes.” George lets Lennie die believing

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