Just like what happened in Weed, Lennie touches the girl's red dress just because he likes it. There isn't any place in his brain for dirty things but the world is deep and dirty where people would never believe in such pure wishes. Lennie however doesn't understand that, and he does what his instints tells him to do. So Lennie gets into trouble, with no harm or even good intent, losts his job and runs away.
When Lennie plays with small animals such as rats, he really likes them. But at last they are always killed by him . Is that because Lennie doesn't like thim anymore or because Lennie is a brute man? Of course not. The answer would be heart-breaking----because Lennie can't control himself, both mentally and physically. He loves those little things, those cute furry soft things, he touches him to get great security but when they bite him softly, he nips their head by the light of nature. If Lennie doesn't have prodigious strength, the situation may not be that worse, but with such strength, his unconscious nip kills his puppy. Just like he asks himself "Why do you got to get killed? You ain’t so little as mice. " ----of course he doesn't know what he has done.
It is the same with the final trouble Lennie gets into. He touches Curley's wife's hair, her soft hair----Lennie loves soft things, and then he forgets that he should not clinch the hair so tight, let alone covers Curley's wife's mouth hard. Why does he do that? He fears that her yell may get George mad, and then George may let him tend no rabbits. What an innocent man! As for killing, that is the last thing in Lennie's head, which turns out to be the only real thing. Then comes Lennie's doomed fate.
Why a good and harmless man can't help himself felling into danger and going straight to the doomed fate?
Is innocence a bad thing? No, it is a moving quality. Is having prodigious strength a wrong thing? No, it helps a lot when machine in pre-machine time. Is mental handicap really that terrible? Not necessarily, many people live a good life with mental handicap. So what's the problem. The problem is that Steinbeck brings these three elements together in Lennie. People usually say kindness brings bless, but here, comes a contrast: the good and kind Lennie with a soft heart does everything wrong unconciously, and gets nothing but a doomed fate. If that is not sympathetic, what else would be?
The third contrast is that the hope inside Lennie and the impossibility the hope is. Lennis has strong belief in his future life with George. He always begs George to tell the blue print again and again, even if he remembers every sentence of the plan. "And the rabbits, George, talk about them" or "I would tend the rabbits" Lennie says as if what they are talking is real, as if tomorrow they are going to live that free and happy life. The rabbits, yes, the rabbits, that is what Lennie cares about because rabbits represent Lennie's great hope for the coming lovely days.
But every reader knows that their dream would never come true because Lennie would never make things right. He will make mistakes, unconsciously, he will get scoldings for his dumb, but next time, he will repeat his previous actions, again. This dead circle would never end The more fierce Lennie's hope grows, the more sympathetic he is. Dreaming of a impossible dream and take it as a real thing----only Lennie can confuse the truth to such extent and that's why he is so sympathetic.
That's how Steinbeck presents Lennie as a sympathetic character in the novel.
