How is lennie helpless

Lennie is not given sufficient human status to be able to care for animals as lesser than him. Although Slim can choose life or death, Lennie is portrayed as a killer without choice. The reader is led to understand that even should Lennie have achieved his dream of tending the long-haired rabbits, this would inevitably have resulted in their deaths. Lennie is not positioned as sufficiently human to be able to take care of animals.

In so far as Lennie is positioned as human it is as a child. Adults with disabilities in general, and those with developmental disabilities in particular, have long been treated as childlike entities, deserving fewer rights and incurring greater condescension than adults without disabilities.

Stevenson et al. However, Lennie is also positioned as menacing. When Crooks suggests that George might have got injured in town, Lennie becomes threatening:. He stood up and walked dangerously toward Crooks. Crooks saw the danger as it approached him. He edged back on his bunk to get out of the way.

When working as a migrant worker himself Steinbeck had witnessed an attack:. Lennie was a real person.

He killed a ranch foreman. Got sore because the boss had fired his pal…. Steinbeck in Fensch, , p. Instead, Steinbeck allows the incident to take on an element of sexuality. George refuses to discuss what he had said presumably a sexual remark about the girls in Murray and he is uncomfortable when Lennie shows signs of sexuality.

People with intellectual disabilities are often portrayed as either sexual innocents or sexual predators Garrison, :. Loftis, , p. Steinbeck uses physical description of Lennie to indicate his intellectual state. This is a calculated technique:. Describing the physical form of a character with intellectual disability has the advantage of visually delineating the abstract concept of the disability … It also plays on the often unspoken assumption that people are as people look.

This belief is so widespread that people with visible anomalies are often assumed to be intellectually disabled, even if they are not. Iyer, , p. The character directions in the book also provide support for the presumably non-disabled actor playing Lennie in the stage version written the same year, and invite that actor to indicate, physically, that Lennie has intellectual disabilities through stereotypical actions and behaviours.

This positioning is validated by Steinbeck through the person of Slim, the clear authority figure of the book. In the stage version published by Steinbeck in the same year Steinbeck makes this affirmation of the unavoidability of the killing even clearer by having Slim condone it before the event. The mob are searching for Lennie but are misdirected away by Slim, leaving only him and George on stage. Eugenics themes run strongly through the narrative of Of Mice and Men. Given the eugenics obsession with genes and breeding, this would have rendered them less threatening.

Steinbeck allows little possibility of a safe future for Lennie if he is detained. Students discussing the ending of the book in a 21st century classroom might consider this justification when aligned with care of learning disabled and autistic people in the present day.

However, this line of argument becomes far more uncomfortable when contextualised in current conditions, as described by a father of an autistic child:. Between 11th June and 8th November , she was physically and forcibly restrained 18 times, including use of prone restraint on a hard floor.

Brutal, frightening and traumatic for a vulnerable autistic child clearly in fight or flight response. During the use of prone restraint, she sustained physical injuries that were neither reported to me or raised as safe guarding concerns to the [Local Authority Designated Officer]. These restraints can involve sedation with strong drugs chemical restraint , the use of belts, cuffs and restraints for behavioural control mechanical restraint , and being forced to the floor in a chest-down position prone restraint.

Dahlgreen, , on-line. The reader is encouraged to validate this care despite the many insults that George levels at Lennie, his mimicry of him, his taunts and his report of the near drowning incident in the past.

When a child without a disability is murdered by their parents, everyone stands united in condemnation. No one attempts to understand, justify, or explain the murder. No one expresses sympathy for the murderer. No one argues that every parent has had moments or thoughts like that … The crime is punished harshly, and the victim is remembered and mourned. Gross, , p. This narrative needs to be challenged in schools. In the Autism Self Advocacy Network Anti-filicide Toolkit there are a number of suggestions made about how to write about the murder of a disabled person by their parent or carer.

However, it remains a valid undertaking not least because characters from fiction may sometimes take on a life of their own, unimagined by their creator.

In , the Supreme Court in America barred the execution of mentally disabled people. The Court of Criminal Appeals stated that their role was to:. Crowell, , p. Setting aside the fact that Lennie Small is, in fact, murdered by his only friend, George Milton … one wonders what business Lennie has appearing as a limit case in a legal instrument designed to measure intellectual disability and fitness for capital punishment? Kupetz, , p. Texas, There is no suggestion at any point that George will face criminal investigation, imprisonment or any other sanction for his crime.

McCarthy et al. Garrison studied the perceptions of disability of 28 female and 20 male adolescents aged 14 or 15 on reading the text of Of Mice and Men. The results were disturbing. This study builds on the work of Sonya Loftis who, as an autistic researcher, is powerfully placed to discuss the portrayal of Lennie within a modern reading of the book. Good practice in autism research is beginning to recognise the importance of these voices:. Autistic researchers have begun to contribute to the debates over aspects of autism, to research led by non-autistic scholars, and to the development of our understanding of autism.

Chown et al. One of the fundamental issues regarding the portrayal of Lennie in Of Mice and Men lies in the way that Steinbeck positions the reader from the very beginning to identify with George. Another example of how Lennie is forgetful is when he grabbed Curley's hand and crushed it. This event is important because Lennie had held on, not knowing what to do next, until George told him what to do.

Since people would laugh at him, he would fight back and not back down in fights. The tribe in Lord of the Flies is afraid of certain aspects of on the island. Ralph asks Jack why he hates him, causing uneasiness across the other boys: "'Why do you hate me? It appears as if Lennie was being clever but by handing the mice to George, his childish behavior is revealed. His ingenuous acts portray identically to a child influencing the reader to gain sensitivity to the way Lennie is treated.

The way Lennie understands the world and process thoughts makes him mentally stable, for a child. Logical and reasoned, Piggy, is tormented by the other boys for being rational. Piggy realizes that he is different and tries to use his gift for the well being of the group. This shows that Lennie is incompetent and constantly needs support from his companion which is usually unnecessary for a grown man to require so sympathy is built up.

Lennie is a 'dumb animal' and cant decide on things himself and needs George to help him out in many occasions in the boss's office where George answers Lennies questions for him.

Lennie is always looking for support from George and constantly wants to pet something to comfort him like a child would which emphasizes again how immature Lennie is for his age and his general incompetence which people may find hard to believe and depressing that Lennie is in such a mental state so the audience feels sympathy for Lennie. A true friend is someone who is willing to aid you in any situation.

George demonstrates this to Lennie. He shows understanding through everything Lennie does. George cares for and takes care of Lennie even though he could easily leave him. Hopeless or Hopelessness? Hopelessness and futility can lead a life into nowhere, because without hope you won 't have a dream or a goal to accomplish. Hopelessness is often shown in places where people have no hope to continue life or anything.

It is also shown in the book with other character 's actions. George is Lennie 's best friend who lost hope on Lennie because Lennie keep on getting in trouble. Lennie is a big, muscular man, but he is also unintelligent and irresponsible. He always gets in trouble because he likes to pet soft things, and when he do, he can 't stop petting it.

Lennie petted a puppy …show more content… When Lennie and George get a farm his punishment is not to tend any rabbits. One thing George lost hope to Lennie and killed him is when he was petting Curley 's wife 's hair. When Lennie was petting harder and harder to Curley 's wife 's head, it was hurting Curley 's wife, so Curley 's wife 's natural reaction is to scream. Lennie doesn 't want to get into more trouble because he already killed a puppy before touching Curley 's Wife and he doesn 't want to get into more trouble, he gripped Curley 's wife 's neck and accidentally twisted it, which caused the death of Curley 's wife.

Why does Lennie have a dead mouse in his pocket? How is Lennie different from the other men? Why do George and Lennie travel together? Why does Curley wear a glove on one hand? What does Slim do at the ranch? Characters Lennie.