Facil

Ana Laura Leyva Guemez
“ Of Mice and Man”
Describes Lennie’s Contradictory personality

Lennie is a “huge man, with shapeless face, large pale eyes and wide sloping shoulders. He walks dragginghis feet and his arms hung loosely”. In the novel, Lennie is compared to an animal several times, showing us that he is impulsive. He has pure childlike feeling towards George because he had beenalways there for him. Lennie is enormous and mentally slow, while George is little and intelligent, in that case, Lennie is George's foil in 2 aspects mentally and physically. Lennie is ignorant andinnocent, so therefore his actions are a little ironic comparing his physical description. Lennie does not know his own strength, he is innocent but dangerous at the same time, he is like a kid but thenagain he does not know the damage he can cause.

One example of Lennie’s contradictory personality is in Weed, the previous ranch Lennie and George worked on. Lennie is like a little kid and he“wants to touch ever’thing he likes. Just to feel it”. So he sees this girl in a red dress, when Lennie “reaches out to feel this red dress” she starts to squawk and tries to run away, Lennie freaks out andholds on to her until George has to hit him over the head to make him let go. The girl accuses Lennie of rape, and George and Lennie have to run to a new ranch. In this event Lennie’s intention is notrape the girl or make any harm, he just wants to touch the fabric of the girl’s red dress. However his physical doesn’t help him at all and the girl does not know about his mental disability. Infinal words, Lennie has the mind of a child and he does not know how strong he is.

Another way that Lennie has a contradictory personality is his obsession with petting animals. On chapter 3 Lennie’scontradictory personality shown when he comes into the bunkhouse, carrying his new puppy under his clothes. Lennie was hiding the puppy under his clothes because he is not allowed to take the...