Of Mice & Men

This book had many sub-conflicts, which in my opinion all originated from one main conflict. To me the main conflict is very complicated, and it takes a bit of understanding about the character named Lennie. Lennie has a mental defect, which causes him to act very childish and slow. He has done things before that caused him and George to have to leave the city of weed in search of a new job. I thin that the conflict is Character (Lennie) vs. Himself because of his fate. His fate being his mental defect that he can not control because he was born with it.

            First, the conflict between Lennie and the lady with the red dress in Weed. All Lenny wanted to do was to touch the lady’s red dress. Because of Lennie’s disease, he did not know that just going and touching the dress was not ok. Plus, he did not let go of her dress because he absolutely had to touch it, so he did not let go when the girl tried to pull away. This caused George and Lennie to be run out of town and try to find a new job. Yes the conflict of this event was Lennie vs. the lady, but it was a result of Lennie vs. himself because of his disease.

            The second sub-conflict I want to address, I the conflict between George and Lennie. Because of Lennie’s defect, George has to watch after Lennie, and make sure that he is ok. As a result of George having to watch after Lennie, George keeps losing his jobs because Lennie screws things up for him by doing something completely ridiculous like the accident in Weed. Once again, it is not directly Lennie’s fault because he could not control his defect, but no one else is to blame. This proves again that it is character vs. self because of Lennie’s defect.

            The last sub-conflict I am going to address is huge accident where Lennie accidently killed Curly’s wife. All Lennie was trying to do was touch her hair, but instead he accidently snapped her neck (because of his defect). This resulted in George just ending Lennie’s life by shooting him in the back of the head. Personally I think that George did the right thing, because Lennie would have been killed by other people in the end anyway, so George just ended it. This all happened once again because of Lennie’s defect which leads to character vs. self. All of these examples simply prove my point about how the main conflict is character vs. self because of Lennie’s fate of his disease.