Friendships What is the effect of friendships on the other people in the novel? Why? What are the positive and negative effects of friendship in Steinbeck's world? How does the context to the novel link with this theme? What point do you think Steinbeck is trying to make by including this theme? By Liam Marillier & Luke Kitteridge The swearing in this is only quotations from the book!!!!!!
George and Lennie: Their friendship is like a father and son relationship as George is always looking out for Lennie and telling him what is right and wrong. Whenever Lennie gets into trouble George has to get him out of it and because Lennie is always getting into trouble they are always running away and cannot settle down. “In a panic, Lennie looked at George for help.” This shows that Lennie is almost looking for instructions before acting as if George is his father: “Whatever we ain’t got, that’s what you want.” “Look George look what I did.” Lennie is trying to impress George as if he is his son.
Candy and his dog: This is another friendship but in this case it isn’t two humans because Candy is an outcast so he doesn’t have any time to spend with the other men when working. Even though they have this friendship, Candy is still very lonely as he can’t talk to his dog and play cards with him like with a human. Candy loves his dog and the two of them have been together for a very long time: it is a lasting friendship: “you wouldn’t think it to look at him now, but he was the best damn sheep dog I ever seen”. Crooks and his horses: American society would have forced Crooks to not have any friends as he is black and therefore being with the horses constantly and taking care of them would be the closest thing to a friend he has.
The main character that is affected in the book by these friendships is Crooks as he is the loneliest person and isn't even allowed to talk to the other men as he is black. This was because it was a very racist time and they would treat him as if he was a slave: “they let the nigger come in that night. Little skinner name of Smitty took after the nigger.” Crooks would therefore be very jealous of George and Lennie’s friendship, which may be why he is horrible to Lennie – and why he latches onto their dream. They have everything that he doesn’t.
American society at the time would make people suspicious of George and Lennie’s friendship as it was unusual for people to travel around together. ”What you trying to put over” and “you taking his pay away from him?” are said by the Boss when he finds out they travel together. These two quotes show that the boss suspects something is wrong with them because he isn’t used to seeing two guys travel around together (as Slim later comments). He therefore sees George speaking for Lennie because he doesn’t want him to talk about what happened in Weed, as suspicious and a bad thing.
George and Lennie had a very rare relationship because not many people would have friends in this time in America. Life in America was very hard because men were always moving around from place to place which would make it hard to make friends because they may see one guy one week and then a total different guy the next. Through all this moving about they wouldn’t be able to carry many possessions, therefore putting more pressure on their life, and making it not as much fun. Another reason why there were not many friendships was because all the men were in competition to get land so they would cheat anyone to get their own land. And because George and lennie did have this rare friendship people eyed them as suspicious as they travelled together and not a lot of people done this.
Steinbeck’s point in including this theme is to show that friendships in the 1930s didn’t last very long. Steinbeck shows this by the killing of Candy's dog and Lennie getting shot. This also shows that society and friendship didn’t work together during the 1930s.