Final writing project Stephen M

The value that struck me the most about Of Mice and Men is the value of friendship in the novella. George and Lennie’s bond connects them in a way to where neither of them could live the same without the other. The relation between the two is very much a love/hate relationship. George’s life would be way easier without Lennie, but it also would be a lot sadder and reckless. I also don’t think Lennie could survive without George or his Aunt Clara. George chose to kill Lennie at the end of the novella Of Mice and Men, because it was the only thing he could do, his actions were meant with the best intentions. I think George’s decision shows the love he had for Lennie, these are my reasons why George made the better choice.
First, Lennie has no idea how strong he is, nor does he know how fragile living things are. George understands that these things will continue to happen, no matter what he says or does to help Lennie. For George there is really no other option for Lennie that would help him. If he were to keep going on and running away with Lennie, these kinds of incidences will always follow. In the novella George said to Lennie “you can’t keep a job and you loss me every job I get. Just keep me shoveling all over the country all the time. And that aint the worst, you get in trouble. You do bad things and I got to get you out.”(11). This implies that Lennie has done things like this before. And what if George ran away with Lennie again, on page 7 it shows that Lennie remembered what happened in weed, so what if he remembered killing Curley’s wife? Lennie knows killing Curley’s wife was wrong, he even says so on page 91, so what if they ran again, who can say that Lennie won’t think it was okay to do bad things, because every time he gets in trouble they leave and Lennie gets away without any punishment. And what if George had turned Lennie in? People would look at him no differently than murderers or criminals, regardless of his handicap. Mental institutions were very different back then, they would have just locked him away and Lennie would never get the help he needed. This would have been no good for Lennie.
There are a lot of present day branches of this, things that are similar in theory and intention. Things such as euthanasia (mercy killing), war, the use of cops. So if you still think the killing of Lennie was wrong, even with the good intended, think about your grandma/grandpa or someone very close to you in the hospital and there in a coma, the doctor is telling you that they are in serious pain everyday and are never going to recover. They are only living on a life support machine, should it not be okay to pull the plug and let them die painlessly, or should they have to live out the rest of there lives never going to do anything but lay in bed as a vegetable? And if it’s still not okay to kill anyone, what if some random person decides to go and shoot people at there school or job? Should the police not be allowed to shoot them to stop the killings or should they just wait for them to run out of bullets so they can arrest them? This is why killing Lennie was a good thing, it saved everyone from trouble and pain down the road and it stopped any more killings from happening, even if they were accidental.
And what about capital punishment, abortion and suicide? Who should be allowed to decide who dies? The government, parents, yourself? If a women gets raped and she can’t afford to raise a child or if she’s too young to have a child, should she be forced to have the child anyways? Did you know that in the United States of America it is against the law to commit suicide, which means if you try to commit suicide and you fail it can be a felony. And if you do succeed you can still face legal matters, as of how you get buried, what happens with all of your property, and things your family have to face, like if they can collect life insurance or be granted money from the court. So should people not be allowed to make these decisions, I think they should. So killing Lennie was right, sometimes people can’t see how they are a problem or understand there a problem, even if they mean no harm. People who can see these things should be allowed to act to help them, even if the solution isn’t one that seems very pretty or right at the time.
George chose to kill Lennie for the better of everyone; some times you just can’t save everyone, an it might be hard to make decisions like these an to someone standing at a different perspective it might look wrong, but if you do it with good intentions it will always be right. George made a good choice because no one would have understood Lennie; people would be very unforgiving to his actions. In the time and age we live in people like Lennie can get the help they need, but sometimes they cant, like candy’s dog, there pain can’t be fixed. There are people right now in hospitals who will never get better, people who have to carry out the rest of there lives hooked up to a machine to keep them alive and to easy the pain. So what I’m saying is that George killing Lennie might not be something you like but it was the right choice because all the resources we have today, were either hugely different back then or they were not there at all. There was no help, no understanding Lennie could get, people would have been very unkind to him. All together the novella Of Mice and Men is largely based around values, and I think that value is friendship and how much it really means to people, how precious it is, and of how some choices, as wrong as they might seem, are for the better because you love them.