Of Mice and Men 5

CHARACTERS Lennie - A large, lumbering, child-like migrant worker. Mildly retarded since birth, he is completely dependent on his traveling companion, George, who has been taking care of him since his Aunt Clara died. The two men share a vision of farm that they will own t ogether, a vision that Lennie believes in implicitly. Gentle and kind, Lennie nevertheless does not understand his own strength, and his love of petting soft things--like animals, dresses, …

…free will seems illusory. This lack of control over their lives forces them to locate their happiness elsewhere--in Crooks' childhood, or Curley's Wife's vision of Hollywood stardom, or George and Lennie's Eden-like dream of their own farm. The whole point of these visions is that they are not real, and Of Mice and Men is essentially the story of how George learns that hard lesson and comes to grip with a life of lost illusions.