Mice and Men

The character Lennie can be described as both caring and harmful. His intentions are good however due to the combination of his mental illness and his bodily figure, he finds himself hurting people by accident. His mental condition makes it difficult for him to stay calm when under pressure. If someone makes him nervous or scared, he often does something that he regrets later. A good example is when Curley's wife screamed and that frightened Lennie. The fear put him under a lot of pressure, which is the main reason why he accidentally killed Curley's wife. Lennie does not know his own strength and when he ends up under a lot of pressure, he uses too much force in his actions and hurts someone. Even when he's not under pressure, it is difficult for him to keep animals alive when he pets them. When he is under stress, the force in his actions will most likely by deadly.

When Lennie hurts someone, it becomes clear that he did it by accident. He often shows regret in his actions and tries to cover up the accident. Though Lennie is mentally challenged, he is capable remembering particular things that George tells him. However, he does not have the proper logic to utilize George's warnings for the better. When George told Lennie to stay away from Curley's wife, that piece of information stayed with Lennie. However he could be easily tricked into talking with Curley's wife because he was unable to understand why he wasn't suppose to talk to her. If he were capable of thinking more logically, then he wouldn't have been stuck in situations where he would have to control his actions. He has too much trouble keeping his strength under control, thus when he ended up in tough situations, things always turned out ugly. Lennie's difficulty with thinking logically or controlling his strength ended up being his ultimate weakness. His mental illness wouldn't have caused so much trouble if he had been a physically weak person however he had the combination of both mental and physical problems, which made him a deadly character.