Of Mice and Men Empathy Essay Outline

📌Category: Books, Of Mice and Men
📌Words: 960
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 12 June 2022

In life, sometimes Adults need other Adults to make difficult decisions. And it is this idea of making significant and difficult decisions that Steinbeck writes about in the novel Of Mice and Men. The story Of Mice and Men is about a man named George who has to take care of someone with a disability named Lennie, but they are poor and are trying to find a job, so Lennie must behave in order to get the job. Steinbeck creates powerful empathy for the character George center around him making difficult decisions, in order to help the reader prepare for, and deal with his ultimate decision to Kill Lennie.

In order to begin laying the groundwork, Steinbeck first helps the reader sympathize with and understand who George is. Steinbeck mostly uses the methods of Struggling and Kindness to help us as readers buy into George's character. When we see him early in the novel, he struggles in the woods with Lennie drinking river water for survival, and has been here waiting for an opportunity. In addition, George is kind because he helps Lennie get through the struggles. But the primary means of creating sympathy that Steinbeck uses is making significant decisions. Making significant decisions doesn’t only impact the start of the novel, but also the end. In the beginning of the novel George makes significant decisions by staying with Lennie. George has a choice to let Lennie go off and die, but George stays and “protects” him. “Jesus Christ, somebody’s shoot you for a coyote if you was by yourself. No, you stay with me.”(Steinbeck 13) This shows the reader and makes them sympathize with George because we feel bad for him having to protect and take care of Lennie. Once the reader starts to sympathize with George, they also start to understand George. The reader now needs to understand that George is pretty much a father to Lennie, which results in him having to make significant decisions and being kind to him. He has to treat him like that because he is like his kid. We need to Understand that George must make these decisions around Lennie and needs to take to him like a kid to get his understanding. “First chance I get I’ll give you a pup. Maybe you wouldn’t kill it.” This gives the reader a complete understanding of George because we now see that he has to make decisions based on Lennies actions.

At the start of the novel, the reader might have only pitied or sympathized with George, but by Chapter 3 in OMM, the reader finally learns to empathize with George. The moment that empathy starts to begin is in chapter 5 when Lennie says he smacked the dog. I start to personally empathize with George then because I feel the pain and how annoyed George is. Lennie Isn’t trying to be like that but it can still be annoying. In the story the reader starts to empathize with George when it says, “I made like I was gonna smack it an’ an’ I done it.” (Steinbeck 87) This quote shows the reader what George has to go through and this was the part where I finally started to empathize with him because I couldn’t Imagine what that would be like and how annoyed I’d be. This moment of empathy is valuable because what is about to happen next will challenge the reader and make them question what they believe would be the “right” thing to do.

“However the reader empathizes with George, their empathy is put to the test when, in Chapter 5, when George has to take care of Lennie.” In the end of the book George must kill Lennie, not because he wants to, but because he has too. If the reader has not yet empathized with George this is the point where it would happen. George kills Lennie out of kindness. When I say this I mean that he is saving Lennie from a slower more painful death from if Curley shot him through the guts. The reader can now sympathize with George when he talks to Lennie about their dreams to distract him from the pain. It happens when George says, “we’ll have a cow,” said George.” (Steinbeck 105). George says this one thing and many others to distract Lennie and make him live a happy life without dying with fear. This is what makes the reader empathize with him because the readers now understand why he killed Lennie. “In everyday life, if you heard that You killed your best friend], you would probably think to yourself why am I such a terrible person, why did it have to end this way. Why couldn’t I be there with him. “And without sympathy and understanding, when reading this moment in Of Mice and Men the reader might think he killed someone but he did it out of heart and knowledge knowing that if he didn’t kill him it would have been worse and more painful. “However, because Stienbeck has created empathy for George, the reader realizes that he kills Lennie because he doesn’t want him to die slowly and painfully.

Steinbeck is in fact very successful, he is successful at creating sympathy and empathy for many characters, especially George. I know that Steinbeck is successful at creating sympathy and empathy because, in the story he makes the readers feel the emotions of George and how he feels when he has to “babysit” Lennie. He also creates a mood in which helps us empathize with George, with the other characters. The other characters help us empathize, in my opinion, with George the most. The characters help the most because they help us know what it is like for George to have to be the “big man” that takes care of everything.

“John Steinbeck once wrote, ‘It means very little to know that a million Chinese are starving unless you know one Chinese who is starving.’ The same can be said of those who stand with George about knowing what he is going through, taking care of someone with a disability.But after reading Of Mice and Men, hopefully the readers can sympathize and empathize with other characters as well.

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