Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Part 3: Lennie's Independence
I think it was interesting how George did NOT help Lennie when Curly attacked. Although one may think George was acting out of fear or selfishness, I feel otherwise. I think George knew that he could've taken Curly in a fight, but he wanted to force Lennie to become independent. Therefore, he only encouraged Lennie to fight back, he did not actually intervene. I think George's plan both succeeded and failed, depending on how you look at it. Lennie was eventually forced to fight back, and easily crushed Curly. (His hand, specifically.) Although this was what George wanted, I do not think it went down in the manner that made Lennie any more independent. He only followed George's orders, and in the end he felt bad because he had not actually meant to hurt Curly, even though Curly had attacked him. This shows Lennie's childish and arrogant spirit. Normally, the champion of a fight would celebrate and mock, but Lennie looked for help because he felt what he did was wrong. What do you think? Should George have physically intervened? Or did he make the right choice by forcing Lennie to (sort of) stand up for himself?
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I feel that George did the right thing by being passive in the fight. This is good because it forced Lennie to make his own decision and stand up for himself. The fight did not go as planned, though, because Curley ended up having his hand severely broken. This hurt Lennie's feeling of self worth and made him feel like he had done something wrong. I found it interesting that Lennie asked if he could still tend the rabbits at the end of the book. This shows that he trusts George and he feels bad for his actions. Lennie is too immature to understand that it was not his fault that Curley's hand was broken. Also, Lennie cowers in fear at the beginning of the fight until he is encouraged by George to fight back. This tells the reader that Lennie fully trusts in George and relies on him to make all of his decisions.
ReplyDeleteI think George was sort of acting as a father like we talked about, not by letting him get beat up, but trying to encourage him to stand up for himself because he may need to later in life. I also think this means Curley will not be messing with Lennie because he knows that Lennie is very strong and could hurt him again.
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