George and Lennie's friendship

The argument

The case for reading Of Mice and Men as a novel about friendship rests on the fact that George and Lennie's bond is the one thing in the book that does not obey the logic of the world around it. They stick together through everything. When Lennie is accused of assaulting a woman, George helps him escape so that he is not hurt by the townspeople, or worse — an act carrying real risk for George and no advantage. That is why their coworkers are puzzled that he has stayed with Lennie so long. That George has stuck with Lennie for so long is the fact the other men cannot account for. The friendship is also, in part, custodial. George guides Lennie in how to speak and carry himself, and the pattern is set early in the novel when he tells Lennie directly to get rid of the mouse he is holding. Lennie is extremely resistant at first, but he eventually gives in and takes George's advice. The exchange shows the shape of the relationship: George's authority rests on Lennie's willingness to yield to it, and Lennie yields because the person asking is the one who looks after him. The ending tests the reading and, on this account, confirms it. Their devotion is seen most clearly in the closing pages, when George shoots Lennie. The act can be interpreted as cruel, but it is far more humane than the alternative available at that moment, which was Curley's threat to lynch him. Rather than leave Lennie at the mercy of Curley, George does it himself. A bond that survives flight, that structures both men's daily lives and that finally determines how one of them dies is not a subplot. On this reading, Of Mice and Men is about friendship.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics do not deny the friendship but question whether it is what the novel is 'about.' On many readings George and Lennie's bond is the means by which Steinbeck explores other themes rather than the theme itself: their dream of a shared farm dramatises the unreachable American Dream, and their companionship stands out precisely against a backdrop of pervasive loneliness — Crooks, Candy and Curley's wife all crave the connection the two men have and cannot find it. The friendship's destruction, culminating in George shooting Lennie, is frequently read as being about the death of that dream and the isolation of migrant life, not as an affirmation of friendship. On this view the relationship is the novel's vehicle, and its real subject is loneliness, broken dreams or the loss of innocence that the friendship is set up to expose.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P3] Critics read George's shooting of Lennie not as the culmination of friendship but as the collapse of the shared dream and an image of inescapable loneliness, supporting a different central theme. [Rejecting C] That the friendship is vividly depicted does not make it the novel's subject; it can be the device through which Steinbeck explores loneliness, the failed American Dream or lost innocence.