Reading Response

Reading Log#3

Title: Of Mice and Men
Author: John Steinbeck
Type: Novel
Date finished: 24th March 2009
Personal Response:
This novel is about two cousins who live during the recession and work in a barn, to get enough money to buy their American Dream. Their American dream was to own, “…the fatta the land…” and look after the animals such as rabbits. Lennie, who is mentally challenged gets excited about the idea of patting soft thingsthat include “…tending em’ rabbits” .While George looks after him as a big brother, trying to keep him away from doing any harm. But as everyone in the barn gets used to George and Lennie, Lennie accidentally murders Curley’s (boss’s son) wife running away from the incident. But the thought of Lennie getting tortured by Curley made George think of a decision that would be the last thing on his mind. So George kills Lennie, keeping everyone in the barn safe and Lennie from the serious consequences.

An important character in the novel is George Milton, because he made a difficult decision to save his close cousin. This meant murdering Lennie so that he does not face the consequences by Curley or rot to death in jail. Another reason why he kills Lennie is to keep everyone safe in the barn. Even though this was a tragic decision, this affected George very badly. Since the two cousins have known each other ever since their childhood years. Another reason why George is an important character is because he treats Lennie as a little brother, even though Lennie is a grown man and also larger then George. This made George a caring thoughtful character who would keep Lennie safe from trouble. For example when Lennie and George were working at a different barn, Lennie liked to feel soft things so he reached out to a lady wearing a red silk dress, and the lady panicked screaming and reporting to the officer for abuse. The whole barn went looking for Lennie but luckily the two cousins escaped safely.

I found this book interesting because George made an important decision towards the end of the novel, since Lennie and George had a close relationship ever since they were children. At first I did not understand why George killed Lennie because he was known and described as a big brother towards Lennie. But as we started to study the novel, I realised that George killed Lennie for the right reasons in his eyes. The reason why George murdered Lennie was because he did not want to watch Lennie suffer through the consequences that was prescribed by Curley, or have Lennie cause more problems in future if they both escaped.