In John Steinbeck's Novel Of Mice and Men Steinbeck develops an unbreakable and abnormal bond between two men, George Milton and Lennie Small. Throughout the book their friendship is seen as different compared to everyone else's friendships on the ranch. Steinbeck Uses the motif of friendship to help his readers to understand that human beings both crave and fear the feeling of friendship in their lives when they are put in situations with new and unknown people. Throughout the novel George and Lennie encounter situations where they are both trying to meet new people and find new friends on the ranch but never quite come up successful. This is due to the amount of fear that comes to the others with the thought of having …show more content…
Upon arrival to the Ranch the men are shown to their bunks in the large bunkhouse and are introduced to their foreman. Slims legacy around the ranch was that he was so wise and mythological “his ear heard more than was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.”(34). When Slim first meets the men he shows the great importance of a companion along your side from job to job during this Great Depression. When Slim first me the men he “looked through George and beyond him “Ain’t many guys travel around together”(35) he mused. He continued by saying “ I don't know why. Maybe everybody in the whole damn world is scared of each other”(35) Steinbeck's use of the word “damn” communicates that Slim seems to be affected by this issue and he is sick of seeing the same old single guys around the ranch who want nothing to do with anyone else. Slims communicating through this that it is very valuable to have a friend that you can do everything with. His second part of what he said shows that the fear given off from other people prevents them from going after a friendship or personal connection with another person. That is why the friendship with George and Lennie is so powerful and special. After all Slim “the Prince of the Ranch”(33) has a great …show more content…
This motif is seen multiple times throughout the novel and is seen in many more instances than the three that were mentioned. We can conclude that everyone needs another counterpart to share ideas with and the intimidation of another person often keeps people from finding their perfect companion or counterpart. In the end, everyone has to go through the fear to find a friend when they need someone to talk to. One question that arises from this is, Does the invention of social media take away the initial fear of a new person since can just look them up on Instagram or Twitter and see if they have anything in common with