History Characters / OfMiceAndMen

!!Lennie Smalls

* BelievingTheirOwnLies: After seeing Curley's wife's dead body and knowing who had done it, George reveals that deep down he never actually believed in the dream he talked about with Lennie and only lied to comfort the latter. But he had told the lie so much that even he started to believe it and had hope...only for the reality of Lennie's intellectual disability to ruin things.
* BullyingTheDisabled: In his backstory, he often makes Lennie do stupid things because he knows that the latter is too simple-minded to think for himself and about the consequences, even going so far as to physically beat Lennie. After Lennie nearly drowns from jumping into a river at George's behest, he becomes [[TheCaretaker Lennie's carer]] as atonement.

* TheEeyore: He's become short-tempered, gloomy, and pessimistic as a result of all the trouble Lennie's put him through.

## [[spoiler:Have Lennie sent to prison where he'll either be corrupted by the other inmates, face plenty of abuse by them, and/or get killed by them on a whim. Or similarly worse, have Lennie be locked in a cage for the rest of his life and still be harassed and humiliated by onlookers.]]

* MeaningfulName:
** George means "farmer, earthworker" in Greek and he's a migrant labor worker with dreams of running his own ranch.
** Similarly, Milton means "Mill town (a settlement with a mill)" in British. George wishes to quit his nomadic lifestyle as a migrant labor worker and settle down somewhere with acres of land to cultivate as a ranch.

* NoSocialSkills: He has very little common sense and doesn't understand social cues. A big example is that before the events of the novel, Lennie snuck up to a lady in a pretty red dress because he wanted to feel the soft fabric. It never registered in his mind that the lady would see it as an AttemptedRape, and things went downhill from there as he and George had to skip town.

* AccidentalPervert: {{Deconstructed|trope}} in his previous job. Lennie only wanted to feel the soft fabric of the red dress worn by the lady, but due to his simplemindedness, he fails to account for how the lady would react to a ''grown man sneaking up on her and grabbing her dress''.

* MistakenForPervert: PlayedForDrama. Before the start of the story, Lennie got himself and George into big trouble involving a woman wearing a pretty red dress. Being TheDitz with NoSocialSkills, Lennie sneakily creeps up on the woman simply wanting to feel her dress, and when she notices him, the woman understandably FreakOut. This also causes Lennie to freak out by clutching her dress tightly as she demanded him to let go, forcing George trying to make Lennie let go by hitting his head with a ''picket fence'', only for the dress to be ripped that the woman ran throughout the field crying rape. With the danger of a lynch mob, George and Lennie were forced to hide in an irrigation ditch all day before running off to ride a cargo train for the first chance they get at nightfall.

* BullyingTheDisabled: In his backstory, he often makes Lennie do stupid things because he knows that the latter is too simple-minded to think about the consequences. After Lennie nearly drowns from jumping into a river at George's behest, he becomes [[TheCaretaker Lennie's carer]] in their adult years as atonement.

* ButtMonkey: Lennie's simplemindedness cost him every job he's tried to hold down so far and keep him further from reaching his American dream of having his own land and farm with animals on it.

* BetterToDieThanBeKilled: [[spoiler:After Lennie accidentally kills Curley's Wife, George decides to kill Lennie after realizing there were no positive outcomes for him. Other than killing Lennie himself, George only has 3 options.]]

* IdiotHoudini: {{Subverted|Trope}}. Lennie is mentally handicapped and despite being free of malicious intentions the novel shows that his mistakes always have consequences. Whether it'll be wanting to touch a random lady's dress or petting something too hard and destroying it. [[spoiler:In the end, his AccidentalMurder of Curley's Wife forces George to give Lennie a MercyKill less he suffers a CruelAndUnusualDeath by a vengeful Curley, deal with a FateWorseThanDeath regarding the judicial system and mental asylums of the time, or [[ViciousCycle run away with George another state until trouble eventually finds them again and can no longer hide anymore]].]]

* BerserkButton: The normally passive Lennie becomes enraged when Crooks taunts him with a "what if" scenario of George leaving him behind or being injured or killed. Note that this is the only time he actually gets truly angry.

* IdiotHoudini: {{Subverted|Trope}}. Lennie is mentally handicapped and despite being free of malicious intentions the novel shows that his mistakes always have consequences. [[spoiler:In the end, his AccidentalMurder of Curley's Wife forces George to give Lennie a MercyKill less he suffers a CruelAndUnusualDeath by a vengeful Curley, deal with a FateWorseThanDeath regarding the judicial system and mental asylums of the time, or [[ViciousCycle run away with George another state until trouble eventually finds them again and can no longer hide anymore]].]]

* MentalHandicapMoralDeficiency: Defied, Lennie is generally harmless and lacks the ability to be fully aware of the consequences of his actions. He accidentally kills animals, he unwittingly commits sexual assault by grabbing a woman's dress (he did this to only feel how soft it is and wouldn't let go due to panicking about her reaction), and he only breaks Curley's hand in self-defense and at George's command. [[spoiler: After accidentally killing Curley's wife; Curley took advantage of the situation to rally a lynch mob against Lennie for breaking his hand, not because Lennie murdered his wife. George only kills him, in the end, to save him from Curley's lynch mob and to save him from being abused by the asylum.]]

* NoSympathy: And for [[{{Justified|Trope}} good reason]]. Nobody consoles Curley after his right hand gets crushed by Lennie as not only did he attacked

* RedRightHand: Curley wears a glove full of Vaseline on his ''left'' hand to keep it soft for his wife and he's a grade-A asshole. Then, his ''right'' hand gets crushed by a frightened Lennie after he tries to assault the latter, and later becomes hell-bent on murdering Lennie after finding his wife dead.

One of the more experienced farmworkers. The narration dubs him the "prince of the farm"

* RevengeBeforeReason: He tries to beat up Lennie for laughing at him but fails to remember Lennie's reputation for being the strongest man on the ranch, despite his childlike intelligence. Later on, he wants to painfully kill Lennie for killing his wife; but it's really to get back at Lennie for breaking his hand than anything else.

* UnderdogsNeverLose: {{Deconstructed|Trope}}. Because of his shorter height, people will always sympathize with him for being a brave underdog going against the bigger bully in the ring. As Candy and Slim put it, even if his opponent was able to beat him in the ring, there's no true victory for them as they'll be ostracized for actually beating up a shorter guy, [[PlayingTheVictimCard which is something that Curley himself takes advantage of]]. When he ends up losing against the larger, dumber, but kinder Lennie Smalls, nobody sympathizes with him because he was that much of an asshole.
* WoundedGazelleGambit: Curley relies on people feeling sorry for him in fights. If his opponent loses, Curley will be lionized for defeating someone stronger than him while his opponent will be looked down on for picking a fight with a trained boxer; if the challenger wins, he'll be portrayed as the bully who knocked out someone weaker than himself and all the glory will be erased. Candy adds on to this by suggesting that a mob of Curley supporters will actually assault the challenger for beating up Curley. This gambit actually fails in his fight with Lennie, as the latter clearly didn't want to fight, Curley had no reputation to fall back on because everyone hated him, and the other ranch workers were trying to get him to stop because they liked Lennie more than Curley. When Curley gets his hand broken (presumably beyond repair) everyone is consoling a guilt-ridden Lennie and Slim quickly blackmails Curley into keeping quiet.

-->"Well, we ain’t got any. Whatever we ain’t got, that’s what you want. God a’mighty, if I was alone I could live so easy. I could go get a job an’ work, an’ no trouble. No mess ' all, and when the end of the month come I coul' take my fifty bucks and go into town and get what‘ ever I want. Why, I could stay in a cat house night. I could eat any place I want, hotel or an place, and order any damn thing I could think of. An’ I could do all that every damn month. Get a gallon of whisky, or set in a pool room and play cards or shoot pool. An’ whatta I got ?! I got you! You can’t keep a job and you lose me ever’ job I get. Jus’ keep me shovin’ all over the country all the time. An’ that ain’t the,' worst. You get in trouble. You do bad things and I got m get you out." His voice rose nearly to a shout. "You crazy son-of-a-bitch. You keep me in hot water all the time." He took on the elaborate manner of little girls when they are mimicking one another. "Jus’ wanted to feel that girl’s dress - jus’ wanted to pet it like it was a mouse - Well, how the hell did she know you jus’ wanted to feel her dress? She jerks back and you hold on like it was a mouse. She yells and we got to hide in a irrigation ditch all day with guys lookin’ for us, and we got to sneak out in the dark and get outta the country. All the time somethin’ like that - all the time. I wisht I could put you in a cage with about a million mice an’ let you have fun."

* UninhibitedMusclePower: The source of his strength is never explained.

* BullyingTheDisabled: In his backstory, he often made Lennie do stupid things because he knows that the latter is too simple-minded to think about the consequences. After Lennie nearly drowned from jumping into a river at George's behest, he becomes [[TheCaretaker Lennie's carer]] in their adult years as atonement.
* BullyTurnedBuddy: He revealed to Slim that he worked for Lennie's aunt and when she died, Lennie followed him around. One day, George told him to jump into a lake as a joke but Lennie nearly drowned because he didn't know how to swim. After rescuing Lennie, George decided to become Lennie's carer and the two travelled from state to state looking for work.

* CantLiveWithThemCantLiveWithoutThem: As much trouble Lennie unintentionally causes for him, having Lennie around did make him feel special.

* CloudcuckoolandersMinder: He's always working to keep Lennie out of trouble,

* AnimalMotifs: Lennie is given animal similies to show how different he is from other people. Rabbits are often invoked by Lennie because they are his favorite animal. [[spoiler: The focus of Lennie's half of the dream is to tend the rabbits on the farm and when he realizes he's in trouble; he believes George will punish him by not letting him tend to the rabbits. While waiting for George, he hallucinates a rabbit berating him for causing trouble again and telling him that George won't let him care for the rabbits. In the ending, Lennie dies while imagining the rabbits on the farm. On the book cover, there is also a hare hiding from Lennie and George.]]

* HisOwnWorstEnemy: While the novel does have a villain in the form of Curley, it's Lennie's own intellectual disability that causes most of the problems for him and George to achieve their dream of owning their own ranch.

* {{Manchild}}: {{Deconstructed|Trope}}. As a result of his undiagnosed mental disability, Lennie has a child-like behavior, and his hobbies include petting small animals and soft fabrics, and his initial attraction towards Curley's Wife is akin to a PrecociousCrush. Unfortunately for Lennie, he was born at a time when the age of eugenics was running rampant and is currently living in a depression era where many folks aren't too kind.
* MentalHandicapMoralDeficiency: Defied, Lennie is generally harmless and lacks the ability to be fully aware of the consequences of his actions. He accidentally kills animals, he unwittingly committed assault by grabbing a woman's dress (he did this to only feel how soft it is and wouldn't let go due to panicking about her reaction), and he only broke Curley's hand in self-defense and at George's command. [[spoiler: After accidentally killing Curley's wife; Curley took advantage of the situation to rally a lynch mob against Lennie for breaking his hand, not because Lennie murdered his wife. George only kills him, in the end, to save him from Curley's lynch mob and to save him from being abused by the asylum.]]

* RelativeButton: As seen in his conversation with Crooks, Lennie will ''not'' take kindly if someone threatens George or try to joke about him being threatened.

* UnskilledButStrong: He's the strongest man on the ranch and is mentally handicapped. Whenever he's stressed or panicking, he tightens his grip on whatever he's holding and this results in him breaking Curley's hand when the latter assaulted him.

* BodyMotifs: Curley has a hand motif: His glove full of Vaseline, his status as a prizefighter, and how he's emasculated after his hand gets broken by Lennie.

* NiceGuy: One of the nicest and reasonable characters in the book.
* TheReliableOne: Enough to where George was able to confide with him of the truth of what really happened in weed and Lennie's disability.

* JerkassHasAPoint: Though he didn't go about it in the nicest or sympathetic way, he did have a point that putting down Candy's dog is the most reasonable thing to do, as the dog was elderly and toothless. Later on, Candy agrees that the dog needed to be put down but says that Carlson shouldn't have been the one to pull the trigger.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: He's prickly, gruff, and a bit mean but he's not wholly unlikable, as, somehow, he gets along with the other characters. He also sides with Lennie when Curley goads him into a fight since Lennie didn't want to fight and was tearfully guilty about having to defend himself.

* AttractivenessIsolation: With the central theme of loneliness in the story, Curley's Wife's loneliness is a result of her beauty. She admits she married Curley for the wrong reasons and that she only did it to spite her mother for denying her chance at fame. She only wants someone to talk to but everyone else is just so afraid of Curley's reaction that they consider her "jailbait" because they see her as more trouble than she's worth. Her name is also a reflection of this, she was objectified for her beauty and men are too scared of Curley to even talk to her.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: How she dies near the end. George mentions to Slim at one point that the reason why they came to work on the ranch, to begin with, is due to Lennie wanting to "feel the dress" worn by a woman during their last job, leading her to scream when she notices him which also caused Lennie to clutched onto her dress from being startled so suddenly, ''leading'' her to cry rape to the authorities and forcing George and Lennie to escape the area. It becomes a bigger foreshadowing in the 1992 film showing the color of the woman's dress being ''red'', the same color that Curley's wife is worn.

* KickTheDog: In Chapter 4, she calls out Candy for his old age and threatens to lynch Crooks, which kills all the good feelings they were having before.

* TooDumbToLive: She's seen firsthand that Lennie is a simple-minded but powerful fool who was capable of ''crushing her husband's hand'', and that he has problems controlling his strength because he's dumb -- after all, he'd just killed his new puppy by accident when she came in. Yet she's still stupid enough to invite Lennie to start stroking her hair, and then panics when he won't stop. When he grabs her and tells her to stop screaming, she keeps on screaming, and he ends up accidentally breaking her neck in trying to make her stop.

* CrazyJealousGuy: Although his marriage with his wife is practically lifeless, he is extremely possessive of her to the point that if he caught anyone on the farm (with the exception of his father) interacting with his wife, whether they talk to her or not, he'll really give them hell. In an exclusive scene from the 1992 film adaptation; he subtly threatens George by describing the last guy he caught talking with his wife who has also stated that he was "minding his own business" was [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown brutally beaten]] by his hands and was immediately fired.

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: When he's first introduced to the protagonists, he specifically wants to hear Lennie respond to his question of asking them if they're the new workers, and then gets ''right up in his face'' while stating he should respond better next time in a low threatening tone. This moment should already give the reader a tell-tale sign that Curley is bad news, and that it's a not matter of ''if'' he'll be a serious problem for George and Lennie down the road, but ''when'' he'll be a serious problem.
* TheFriendNobodyLikes: You'll be hard-pressed to find someone who actually likes Curley because Curley just bullies anyone weaker than himself and plays the victim whenever someone tries to fight back. They only tolerate him because he's the boss's son and fighting him is not worth the trouble.

** For anybody who so much as ''look'' at his wife the wrong way (see CrazyJealousGuy above).
* HairTriggerTemper: It doesn't take much to rile Curley up into a brawl, and he immediately starts to pounding into Lennie when he "thought" that Lennie was laughing at him nevermind that he believes that Lennie was intimidated by him in their first meeting and was already in a bad mood, to begin with.

* ItsAllAboutMe: [[spoiler: When he finds his dead wife, it's clear that he's using the situation to get revenge on Lennie for crippling him than for killing his wife.]]

* NeverMyFault: The fact that he wants to kill Lennie upon finding his dead wife as an excuse to really get back at him for breaking his hand, ignoring the fact that it was his ''own'' fault for attacking Lennie in the first place despite knowing how strong he was on the job. Even if he wanted to avenge his wife, Curley also ignores how his own poor treatment of her might've played a factor in her death as well.

* PlotIrrelevantVillain: He's definitely a bad guy in the perspective of the main characters, but the ordeals with George and Lennie's inability to achieve their dream due to the latter's stupidity are unrelated to him. If anything, Curley is just one of the many people that causes the duo to escape the area due to every problem caused by Lennie's curiosity, [[spoiler:which forces George to pull the trigger on the former after realizing the futility of it all]].

* NotDistractedByTheSexy: One scene exclusively made for the 1992 film adaptation had George being pestered by Curley's wife for attention but he remains unresponsive, only aggravating her.

* TheBully: To the workers on the farm, who can't really do anything because he's the Boss' son. He especially pounces on Lennie because he's too nice to fight back.

An intellectually disabled person who means well is particularly strong (perhaps too strong) and loves to tend to soft things, especially living ones. His inability to recognise the dangers of his actions often puts him and George in hot water.

* BerserkButton: The normally passive Lennie becomes enraged when Crooks taunts him with a "what if" scenario of George leaving him behind or being injured or killed.

* ChildhoodBrainDamage: Invoked by George when meeting the ranch boss for the first time, stating that Lennie was kicked in the head by a horse as a child and he hadn't been the same ever since. It wasn't true, of course, and even if it did, and taking into Lennie's perchance for feeling soft things, he probably wouldn't have been too smart begin with to be near the imaginary horse.

* DoesNotKnowHisOwnStrength: He's a deconstruction of this. He means well but he doesn't know how to control his strength and is prone to petting things "too hard" as he gets lost in the pleasure and holding onto it tightly when he gets scared.

* DumbMuscle: While he's not "dumb" in the usual sense, he's a deconstruction of this trope, with almost all the death in the book is caused by Lennie accidentally killing something, due to his strength, and not realizing this until it is too late.

* {{Manchild}}: {{Deconstructed|Trope}}. As a result of his undiagnosed mental disability, Lennie has a child-like behavior, and his hobbies include petting small animals and soft fabrics, and his initial attraction towards Curley's Wife is akin to a PrecociousCrush. Unfortunately for Lennie, he's born in a time where the age of eugenics were running rampant and is currently living in a depression era where many folks aren't too kind.

* ObliviouslyEvil: A famous example. Lennie means no harm, but his mental disability leaves him [[DoesNotKnowHisOwnStrength unable to understand his own strength]], which results in [[spoiler:him [[AccidentalMurder accidentally killing Curley's wife]] by breaking her neck in a panicked attempt to stop her screaming, and being confused as to why she's not moving anymore]].
* RelativeButton: As seen in his conversation with Crooks, Lennie will ''not'' take kindly if someone threatening George or try to joke about him being threatened.
* RuleOfSymbolism: Steinbeck uses animal similes to show how different Lennie is to other human beings and how unique he is compared to the other characters.

* AmbiguousDisorder: The exact nature and name of Lennie's intellectual disability are unspecified and since the story is set in the 1930s, there wasn't an official diagnosis for his condition.
** He's got the mental state of a child. Due to his child-like [=IQ=], Lennie is unaware of what he's actually capable of and what damage he can do with his strength.
** Likes to hold soft things (poor social cues) and will instinctually hold onto these soft things when he's stressed or scared.
** Lennie has to rely on a carer to protect him from the outside world, as well as, reign him in when he gets agitated or scared.

* GrumpyBear: He's become short-tempered, gloomy, and pessimistic as a result of all the trouble Lennie's put him through.

* DumbButDiligent: Lennie may not be the smartest but his strength and ability to do what he's told makes him one of the best workers on the ranch, with Slim stating that he nearly worked several of his coworkers to death because they couldn't keep up with him.

* DumbButDilligent: Lennie may not be the smartest but his strength and ability to do what he's told makes him one of the best workers on the ranch, with Slim stating that he nearly worked several of his coworkers to death because they couldn't keep up with him.