Of Mice and Men Qu.

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Do you agree that Lennie is always incapable of taking responsibility for his actions? You should refer closely to Lennie's words, to events and to the actions and opinions of other characters in your answer.

Throughout the majority of the novel, Steinbeck demonstrates how Lennie relies on George to help him out of the dire, tense situations he brings upon himself. Steinbeck conveys this image of Lennie by producing this by frequent  reoccurring events, Lennie's actions or even implicit use of speech from or even directed at Lennie.

At the opening section of the book, Steinbeck chooses to show us the large contrast between George and Lennie; he describes how Lennie "flung himself down" "snorting into the water like a horse." The use of crude descriptive words such as "flung" or "snorting" suggests just how careless Lennie can be. This compares Lenny to an animal which instinctively lashes at the sight of something they want without thinking logically at all. And with this, the readers taste the first time at which how reliant Lennie is of George. Steinbeck chooses to have George say that Lennie will "be sick like you was last night." By mentioning "last night", the reader learns that Lennie must regularly make stupid mistakes like this.

It is made very apparent how Lennie is unable to take responsibility for his actions when he crushes Curley's hand. Lennie was unable to understand the situation when Curley made a misunderstanding about Slim and his wife and Lennie continued "smiling with delight" on a completely different topic. This produces a juxtaposition image in the reader's mind where at one side: Curley is steaming hot with anger as he "whirled" upon Carlson (the word "whirled" also suggests how he only gave Slim respect opposed to Carlson who he flipped into his old aggressive self again) and on the other, Lennie is grinning to himself like an idiot.  The fact that Steinbeck chooses  to have Lennie fantasize whilst a loud commotion is going on nearby shows just how little awareness and sense Lennie has altogether.

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 And this is what leads into the fight. When Lennie is being attacked, he has no intuition to make a decision on what to do so once again he "looked helplessly at George." The word helplessly really emphasises just how incapable Lennie is like a baby animal or lamb for instance when he gets himself into trouble like this. He "bleated with terror" implying that even with the strength Lennie possesses, he is unable to analyse the situation to take responsibility of the problem he has gotten himself into. The words "bleated" and "terror" really create an atmosphere as ...

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