Of Men and Men

    In Of Mice and Men, a historical book about the early 1900s., is about 2 men who go around looking for a  job, and trying to make a scarp of a life. The author, John Steinback, puts these two men through many experiences. Throughout the story, there are many types of conflicts that George and Lennie run into, but all of them occur because of Lennie's mental retardedness. This means the main conflict is actually character vs. self, and this leads to all the other conflicts.
 
    The first reason why Lennie is struggling with himself is shown in the following quote:
"Well, he seen this girl in a red dress. Dumb bastard like he is, he wants to touch ever'thing he likes. Just wants to feel it. So he reaches out to feel this red dress and the girl lets out a squawk, and that gets Lennie all messed up, and he holds on 'cause that's the only thing he can think to do(41)"
George himself said that Lennie cannot control  himself, and he's the one person in the whole story who knows Lennie the best. It's not that Lennie wants to get into trouble by touching people's dresses, it's that he doesn't know there would be consequences. He doesn't know that grabbing girl's dresses will result in being hunted down; he can't thionk that far ahead.

   Here is a second quote showing how Lennie is struggling to control himself after he killed Curley's wife by accident and was worried whether or not George would come:

"And then from out of Lennie's head there came a little fat old woman. She wore thick bull's-eye glasses and she wore a huge apron with pockets, and she was starched and clean. She stood in front of Lennie and put her hands on her hips, and she frowned disapprovingly at him. And when she spoke, it was in Lennie's voice(100)."
When it said there was a little fat old woman that came out of Lennie's head, it could have been just his imagination, but it later said the woman spoke in Lennie's voice, so it was a hallucination. Like I said before, Lennie was worried about whether or not George would come and fetch him. Lennie's mind couldn't handle the stress because of his mental retardedness, so he hallucinated to deal with the stress.This shows that Lennie's mind just can't handle anything other than everyday activities and he needs George to tell him what to do and to comfort him.

   Finally, Lennie's massive strength causes trouble everywhere. Although he's too kind to harm others on purpose, he harms others on accident: Every one of these quotes show times when Lennie killdor alot killed someone. He killed the animals by accident and he almost killed his partner when he was buckin’ barley. A normal person would have been more careful, so this shows Lennie isn’t careful enough. Why? Because he’s a bit mentally retarded and doesn’t think properly. In the first quote, it says that Lennie’s Aunt Clara had given him lots of mice, but he killed every single one of them. I’m guessing Aunt Clara would have given him about 10 or so in total, so Lennie killed all 10 of them. He never learned from his previous mistakes like a normal person and been more careful about thumping animals like it said he did in quote number 3. In quote number 2, it says that Lennie almost killed his partner. Humans tend to be more careful about not hurting other humans around them; it’s human nature. But this doesn’t apply to Lennie, making him even more dangerous. He has this much strength and he doesn’t know how to control it properly, so he looks at George for help.

As we’ve all seen , the central conflict is Lennie vesus himself. He struggles with his own strength, his incapability to tolerate stress, and his instinct to touch whatever he likes even though it may get him into trouble. Lennie has very little control over himself because of his mental retardedness. How he manages to obey George I don’t know.
"An' she stopped givin' 'em to ya. You always killed them(9)."
"He near damn killed his partner buckin' barley(39)."
"Why do you got to get killed? You ain't so little as mice. I didn't bounce you so hard(85).”