Mistake In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

Fending for ourselves
To learn from ones mistakes, one must take the consequences that come with the mistake made and not have someone protect us. We see this through the eyes of George and Lennie in John Steinbecks Of Men and Mice. Lennie, one of the main characters, is protected by George his best friend. In Of Mice and Men George does not give Lennie room to grow as a person, thus protecting Lennie. Humans in General should not care about the welfare of other because it does not give the person room to grow and to learn from there mistake. In Of Mice and Men Lennie, throughout the novella, “does a bad thing”. Lennie however, can not fully comprehend what bad thing he did. George keeps protecting Lennie through the whole novella, thus not
giving room for Lennie to learn and understand what he was doing wasn’t okay. Lennie acts like a child throughout the whole novel For example, When Lennie was making ripples in the water, (“Lennie dabbled his big paw in the water and wiggled his fingers so the water arose in little splashes; rings widened across the pool o the other side and came back again. Lennie watched them go. "Look, George. Look what I done.") (Steinbeck 5) this is a perfect example of George’s childlike mind. George should have let Lennie learn from his mistakes like every child does, and that’s what helps someone grow as person and would have help Lennie grow as well. People are not responsible for the welfare of others, as we can see in Of Men in Mice George does not allow Lennie room grow as person. George, in Of Men in Mice should have let Lennie do his own thing, and suffer the consequences that came with them as a learning experience for Lennie.
Throughout the novella George protects Lennie to much. His mental retardation was a problem that couldn’t be solved, however learning experience would have benefitted Lennie and helped him understand situations better, rather than George repeatedly protecting him every step of his life. He was always responsible for Lennie and that shouldn’t have been the case. Humans should fend for themselves, if everyone picks us up everytime we will never learn how to fend on our own. What George did is exactly what someone’s not suppose to do and that’s repeatly pick someone back up. We saw in Of men and mice what happens when one does that. Lennie just keep doing what he was doing because George never punished him for it. Instead George protected Lennie throughout the whole novella. For example, when George shoots Lennie in the back of the head at the end of the novella. “Look down there acrost the river, like you can almost see the place.” (103). George even brings comfort to Lennie in his final moments. Lennie never learned how to fend for himself and that was the demise of
Lennie. In conclusion, People should not care about the welfare of other because it does not give the person room to grow and doesn’t show them how to fend for themselves. The reader learns that George is protecting Lennie to much, thus proventing Lennie to fend for himself. This leads to the dimise of Lennie because he keeps on getting himself into situations that end up poorly and never learning from the experience. Lennie is always there to pick him back up. One can prevent this from happening in the real world by not caring about the welfare of others, and have them fend with the situations themselves and in the end it will be learning experience for that person. John Steinbeck shows in Of men and Mice that we must fend for ourselves and not care about others in order to gain experience for the real world.