Lennie Small Character Analysis

Of Mice and Men Lennie Small Character Analysis: Who he is in one sentence

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Lennie Small is a huge, gentle, forgetful man with the mind of a child and the grip of an adult, who destroys everything soft he is given, and whose tragedy is that he never once understands what he has done.

What he does

In Chapter 1 he walks to the pool behind George, dragging his feet. He drinks from the pool like an animal. He hides a dead mouse in his pocket and goes back for it after George throws it away.

He asks for the story of the farm and recites his part of it. He agrees to come back to this pool if there is trouble. He forgets almost everything else George says.

In Chapter 2 he says almost nothing. He looks at the floor when Curley challenges him. He stares at Curley’s wife after she leaves, and George warns him off.

In Chapter 3 Slim gives him a puppy. He smuggles it into the bunkhouse. He smiles about the farm, Curley assumes he is being laughed at, and Lennie takes several punches without lifting a hand. When George finally tells him to fight, he crushes Curley’s fist and cannot let go.

In Chapter 4 he wanders into Crooks’s room because he sees a light. He listens and follows very little of it. He becomes frightened and angry when Crooks suggests George might not come back.

In Chapter 5 he kills the puppy by handling it too hard. Curley’s wife talks to him in the barn and lets him stroke her hair. He holds on, she screams, and he breaks her neck trying to quieten her. Then he goes to the pool exactly as instructed.

In Chapter 6 he waits in the brush, has two hallucinations, and is still asking about rabbits when George shoots him.

What he wants

Lennie wants to tend the rabbits. That is the whole of his ambition and he repeats it constantly. The rabbits are how he understands the farm, and losing them is the only punishment he fears.

“Now maybe George ain’t gonna let me tend no rabbits, if he fin’s out you got killed.”
Lennie, over the dead puppy in Chapter 5.

Use this to show how narrow his moral world is. A living thing has died in front of him and his fear is about rabbits. He is not callous. He simply cannot hold the two facts together.

Underneath that he wants to touch soft things. Mice, a puppy, a woman’s hair, a girl’s dress in Weed. The want is harmless and the strength behind it is not.

He also wants George, urgently and constantly. He copies him without being asked and recites their friendship like a prayer.

Key quotes

“I’d pet ’em, and pretty soon they bit my fingers and I pinched their heads a little and then they was dead- because they was so little.”
Lennie, about his Aunt Clara’s mice in Chapter 1.

The clearest warning in the novel, and it arrives in the opening pages. Quote it in any answer arguing the ending is inevitable. Note the logic: he blames the mice for being small.

“because I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that’s why”
Lennie, reciting the friendship in Chapter 1.

He says it the way a child repeats a bedtime line. Use it to argue the friendship is partly a story the two of them tell each other. The second half of the sentence is not true, and both of them keep saying it anyway.

“I done a bad thing. I done another bad thing.”
Lennie, in the barn in Chapter 5.

He knows it is bad without understanding what it is. That gap is the tragedy. Quote this rather than describing his reaction, because the flatness of the sentence does the work for you.

“He gonna leave you, ya crazy bastard. He gonna leave ya all alone.”
The giant rabbit in Lennie’s head, Chapter 6.

His deepest fear, spoken by his own mind, minutes before it comes true permanently. Use it in any answer about the ending, or about what George actually means to him.

What he stands for

Lennie stands for the problem the ranch has no answer to. He is a superb worker and completely dependent. He is worth money and he is a danger. This world has only one way of dealing with anything that stops being simply useful.

He stands for innocence that is not harmless. Steinbeck refuses to make him safe. Curley’s wife struggles and her eyes are wild with terror. Reading Lennie as a big friendly child skips what the text actually says.

He also stands for the limits of blame. George’s own account is that Lennie never once lifted a finger against him, even when George beat him. Everything Lennie destroys, he destroys by holding on.

Steinbeck gives him animal imagery from the first page, comparing his walk to a bear dragging its paws. That is a deliberate frame. It prepares you to see him as something powerful that cannot be reasoned with. It also asks who is responsible for him.

Two strong essay angles

1. Lennie as a pattern rather than a person. Use this for questions on how a writer prepares the reader, or on structure. Track the sequence: mice in Chapter 1, the puppy at the start of Chapter 5, Curley’s wife by the middle of it. Each is larger than the last and each dies the same way. After every one he says a version of the same sentence.

2. Lennie as the question of responsibility. Use this for questions on a character you felt sorry for, or on a difficult moral issue. He does not act until told to and cannot stop until told to stop. In Chapter 3 he says only that George told him to. Argue about where the responsibility actually sits, and use George’s own defence that Lennie never did anything in meanness.

Common mistake

The common mistake is to write about Lennie as a lovable simple giant and stop there. That reading skips Chapter 5. Steinbeck deliberately describes her terror and her struggling, and he does not soften the killing. The character is frightening and blameless at the same time. Holding both in one answer is what separates a good response from an average one. Do not defend him by ignoring what he does.

Quick recall

1. Why does Lennie carry a dead mouse in Chapter 1?

He likes stroking soft things. He has been petting it as they walk. George makes him throw it away twice, because Lennie goes back to fetch it.

2. What happened in Weed?

Lennie touched a girl’s dress because he liked the feel of it. She screamed and he held on tighter. He and George hid in an irrigation ditch and then ran.

3. How does Steinbeck describe Lennie physically?

Huge, shapeless of face, with pale eyes and wide sloping shoulders. He drags his feet the way a bear drags its paws. The animal comparison arrives on the first page.

4. What is Lennie’s job in the dream?

Tending the rabbits. It is the part of the farm he cares about and the only thing he is ever frightened of losing.

5. Why does Lennie not fight back against Curley at first?

Because George has not told him to. He takes several punches without lifting a hand. He acts only when George gives permission, and then he cannot stop.

6. How does the puppy die?

Lennie handles it too roughly. He then gets angry with the puppy for dying. He reasons that it was not as small as a mouse and that he did not bounce it hard.

7. How does Curley’s wife die?

She lets Lennie stroke her hair. He holds on and will not let go. When she screams he covers her mouth and shakes her to quieten her, and breaks her neck.

8. Where does Lennie go afterwards, and why?

To the pool where the novel opened, to hide in the brush. He is obeying the instruction George gave him in Chapter 1, and he is pleased with himself for remembering.

9. What are Lennie’s two hallucinations?

His Aunt Clara, who scolds him for never listening to George. Then a giant rabbit, which tells him George will leave him alone. Both speak in his own voice.

10. Why is Lennie a tragic figure rather than a dangerous one?

Because he never intends harm and never understands it afterwards. He repeats that he did not mean it after every disaster. The repetition is what makes him tragic.

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