Of Mice and Men Essay (First Draft?)

Of Mice and Men is about everyone else being ‘against’ Lennie. Lennie isn’t ‘against’ anyone else, because he’s not sane enough or smart enough to feel that way. Everyone hates him. He just wants something soft.
  
I think the main conflict of the story is character vs. society. At first it’s character vs. character- Lennie vs. George. At one point on page eleven George says, “You crazy son-of-a-bitch. You keep me in hot water all the time.” Throughout the course of the book it is made clear that Lennie is holding George back- he’s slow, and he’s always getting into trouble that makes them need to move around and start over somewhere else. Like any normal person, George is getting sick of it. He often calls Lennie a “crazy son-of-a-bitch” and tells him just how much he holds him back. Lennie threatens to leave, go off the live in the mountains, if he bothers George that much.

That’s when it becomes character vs.self. Almost immediately after George blows up at Lennie and starts shouting at him, he begins taking it all back and apologizing. On page thirteen after Lennie had been threatening to run away, George says, “I want you to stay with me, Lennie. Jesus Christ, somebody’d shoot you for a coyote if you was by yourself. No, you stay with me.” This sort of love-hate-tug-of-war is hidden in the background for the rest of the book, until the last chapter. George tries to be nice, because on the inside he’s shooting himself ten times over for ever being mean to someone as messed up in the head as Lennie.

The people outside of the two are the source of the character vs. society, although Lennie or George could, at any time, be counted in as part of society. Anyways, every man (and woman) on the farm or ranch has something to do with the conflict in the story. Crooks scares the daylights out of Lennie when he says, “S’pose George don’t come back no more. S’pose he took a powder and just ain’t coming back. What’ll you do then?” (Page 71) Curley causes much conflict with the way he’s always getting angry and trying to find any reason to pick a fight with Lenni, who never wanted to hurt anyone. Curley’s wife is a big part of the conflict- she just had to be the biggest whore around. Marriage and a home isn’t good enough- she’s got the flirt with every guy she can rest her eyes on, and do much more than that if she can. Poor Lennie falls into a trap of seduction, but things go much differently than she’d planned, especially when she ends up dead.

Everyone is part of society in some way, even the main characters. That’s why, if you single out one character, everyone else (even the other main character) is also just another part of society. That’s why I think that the main conflict is character vs. society. It’s a big enough umbrella to cover most of the basics.