Lennie Small
Lennie Small is a physically powerful but cognitively disabled itinerant farm worker whose inability to control his own strength drives the tragic arc of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. His childlike dependence on George Milton, his love of soft things, and his fixation on the dream of tending rabbits on a little farm make him both the emotional heart of the novel and the agent of its catastrophe.
Identity and Background
Lennie is a large, powerful man who moves with surprising silence: he appears out of the brush "as silently as a creeping bear moves," startling a heron into flight and sending a water snake into the reeds. He drinks from the Salinas River pool by kneeling and barely touching his lips to the water, and when a bird skitters behind him, his head jerks up and he strains toward the sound with eyes and ears before he sees the bird and drops his head to drink again. He embraces his knees and lays his chin down on them, a posture of childlike vulnerability. His speech is simple and ungrammatical, and he speaks of himself in the third person: "I di'n't forget, you bet, God damn. Hide in the brush an' wait for George." He knows George will be angry — "George gonna give me hell" — and he contemplates running away to find a cave in the hills, but the thought of losing the dream of tending rabbits stops him. His memory is selective: he cannot remember what happens from day to day, but he remembers every word George has ever said to him, including the ritual speech about their difference from other men.
Life and Plot Trajectory
Lennie and George are migrant ranch hands during the Great Depression, moving from job to job after Lennie's strength causes trouble. Lennie has already killed a mouse by petting it too hard, and later he kills a puppy the same way. On the ranch near Soledad, he accidentally breaks Curley's hand when Curley attacks him. His fascination with soft things leads him to stroke a woman's hair; when she panics, he holds on too tightly and breaks her neck, forcing the pair to flee. The novel's final scene returns to the Salinas River pool where it began. Lennie arrives first, hides in the brush as George instructed, and waits. He hallucinates Aunt Clara, who scolds him in his own voice for being a burden, and then a giant rabbit that tells him George will beat him and leave him. When George arrives, Lennie begs for the dream story one last time. George recites it while aiming Carlson's Luger at the back of Lennie's head, and shoots him as the search party crashes through the brush.
Key Actions and Objectives
Lennie's central objective is to tend the rabbits on the little farm he and George dream of owning. This dream is the organizing principle of his life: he repeats it eagerly, shouting "For the rabbits" when George mentions a cow, a pig, and chickens, and he giggles with happiness at the phrase "live on the fatta the lan'." He asks George to tell him about their future place, and when George says they will do it soon, Lennie presses, "Me an' you." His actions, however, repeatedly undermine this goal. He cannot help touching soft things — mice, puppies, a woman's hair — and his strength turns affection into destruction. After each disaster, he knows he has done "another bad thing" and expects George to recite the familiar litany of complaint: "If I di'n't have you I'd take my fifty bucks —" But in the final scene, George refuses to give him hell, and Lennie is confused and hurt. He offers to go away and find a cave, but George insists he stay.
Relationships and Conflict
Lennie's relationship with George is the emotional core of the novel. George is both protector and frustrated caretaker, and Lennie is utterly dependent on him. When the hallucinated rabbit tells Lennie that George will leave him, Lennie cries frantically, "He won't do nothing like that. I know George. Me an' him travels together." He puts his hands over his ears and cries out George's name. When George arrives, Lennie gets up on his knees and asks, "You ain't gonna leave me, are ya, George? I know you ain't." George's silence is the only answer. Lennie also has a remembered relationship with Aunt Clara, who raised him; in his hallucination, she appears as a little fat old woman in thick glasses and a gingham apron, speaking in his own voice to scold him for not minding George. The hallucinated rabbit, also speaking in Lennie's voice, taunts him about his unfitness to tend rabbits and predicts George will beat him with a stick. Lennie defends George: "He ain't never raised his han' to me with a stick. He's nice to me." But the rabbit's repeated refrain — "He gonna leave ya, crazy bastard" — drives Lennie to despair.
Change and Ending
Lennie's arc ends in the same place it began: at the pool by the Salinas River, in the late afternoon. The natural world that opened the novel — the water snake, the heron, the wind waves on the green pool — is still present, but the light has climbed out of the valley and the shadow is blue and soft. George recites the dream one last time, but his voice is wooden and monotonous, and he stops mid-sentence. He tells Lennie to look across the river so he can almost see the place, and while Lennie obeys, George raises the gun. His hand shakes violently, but his face sets and his hand steadies. He pulls the trigger. Lennie jars, then settles slowly forward to the sand and lies without quivering. George throws the gun away and sits stiffly on the bank, looking at his right hand. When the men arrive, Curley sees Lennie and says, "Right in the back of the head." Slim sits close to George and says, "A guy got to sometimes." George lets himself be helped to his feet and goes with Slim for a drink. Carlson, left behind, asks, "Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin' them two guys?"
Narrative Role and Thematic Significance
Lennie functions as both the novel's emotional center and its tragic mechanism. His innocence and his strength are inseparable, and the same quality that makes him love soft things makes him destroy them. He embodies the loneliness of the itinerant worker — "Guys like us got no fambly," George says — but he also represents the possibility of connection: "I got you an' —" "An' I got you. We got each other." The dream of the little farm, with its rabbits and its promise of a place where "nobody gonna hurt nobody nor steal from 'em," is Lennie's reason for living, and George's killing of him is both a mercy and a destruction of that dream. Lennie's death is the novel's final, irreversible proof that the American Dream is unavailable to the poor and the powerless. His last moments are filled with the story of a future he will never see, and his body lies still on the sand while the search party argues about what happened.
