Of_Mice_and_Men_-_Show_How_Friendship_Is_a_Central_Theme_in_of_Mice_and_Men

The novel Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck is set in California during the time of the Depression in the 1930s. It opens with two men, George Milton and Lennie Small walking to a nearby ranch where there are harvesting jobs available. George leads the way as Lennie is a simple minded giant and does not understand much, so George makes all the decisions These men have a special friendship that is a unique and unusual one. George protects Lennie and won’t let any harm come to him and Lennie depends on him to do this . If Lennie didn’t have George to help him Lennie would be locked up in an asylum, so George tries his hardest to stop this from happening, after what happened in Weed and tells him what to do if he gets into trouble “Lennie - if you jus’ happen to get in trouble like you done before, I want you to come right here an’ hide in the brush … Hide in the brush till I come for you.” He will make sure this is stuck in Lennie’s head so that he doesn’t forget, as his memory isn’t perfect. George and Lennie are not alone whereas the rest of the men on the ranch they work at are. Their friendship is realised in chapter 1 George is talking to Lennie by the pool “Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don’t belong no place ….. But not us ! An’ why ' Because … because I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that’s why.” This shows their closeness and how they have each other and they have someone to take care of them. George and Lennie have this dream and it means the world to them. When they’re feeling down they will think about this dream and think of how happy they’re going to be. You are first told about this dream in chapter 1 also by the pool. “ O.K Someday – we’re gonna get the jack together and we’re gonna have a little house and a couple of acres and a cow and some pigs and…” ‘An’ live off the fatta the lan’ “ We’ll have a big vegetable patch and a rabbit-hunch and chickens. And when it rains in the winter we’ll just say the hell with goin’ to work, and we’ll build up the fire in the stove and set around it an’ listen to the rain comin’ down on the roof.” This is the ranch worker's dream but, George and Lennie have so much faith and truly believe that this will happen for them. Although Lennie is simple minded, George needs him just as much as he needs George. You see this when George is talking to Candy (the swapper) in the barn after Lennie has accidentally killed Curley’s Wife, by strangling her. “I think I knowed from the very first. I think I knowed we'd never do her. He usta like to hear about it so much I got to thinking maybe we would.” In the final chapter George finds Lennie by the pool, where he had told Lennie to go if he got into any trouble. George knows what he has to know but can’t bring himself to do it. He knows he must and doesn’t want Lennie to die there and you are told this in this chapter. George tells him to look across the river while he talked about the dream. George refused to let Lennie turn around as he didn’t want him to know what was going to happen. “George: Were gonna get a little place. Lennie: Okay, yeah, were gonna get a little place And we’re gonna... George: We gonna... Lennie: ...have... George: Were gonna have a cow, And some pigs, And were gonna have, maybe-maybe, a chicken. Down in the flat, well have a little field Of... Lennie: Field Of alfalfa for the rabbits. George: ...for the rabbits. Lennie: And I get to tend the rab…” George shoots Lennie, and in that split second the dream is over, it has died along with Lennie. Now George has become one of the lonely migrant workers with no one, he is now just like any other man on any other ranch. Slim tries to comfort him after this, so Slim sat down beside George and told him. "Never you mind, a guy got to sometimes." Steinbeck took the title of his novel from Robert Burns’ poem, To A Mouse. To A Mouse ‘The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men, Gang aft agley An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain For promis’d joy !’