Skip to main content

How can you explain the hallucinations that Lennie has while he waits for George?

Of Mice and Men is a novel-as-play as was Steinbeck's later effort, Burning Bright. The constraints of the stage may ultimately be the most effective explanation for Lennie's vision of a giant rabbit and his deceased aunt.


Even so, the highly practical and persuasive explanation provided in the other post here can perhaps be supplemented by a more diegetic (inside the story) explanation of Lennie's hallucinations and by an additional reading of Lennie as a figure intended to be preyed upon in a system that roots out psychological weakness. 


There is a temptation to see Lennie's hallucinations at the end of the story as emanations of the Freudian psyche. Specifically, Lennie's visions of his Aunt Clara and the giant rabbit seem to align well with the idea of the Super-Ego, the portion of Freud's tripartite psyche associated with morality and socialization. 


The figures of Lennie's hallucinations chastise him and express the negative views that society will have on Lennie's behavior. Aunt Clara tells Lennie that he "don't never take no care" and that he does bad things, never appreciating his sole caretaker and friend, George. The rabbit proclaims that Lennie is crazy and that George is going to punish then abandon him. 



"He gonna leave you, ya crazy bastard. He gonna leave ya all alone. He gonna leave ya, crazy bastard."



In these exchanges, we might see Lennie's social conscience working through the hallucinations and connect them to the notion of his Super-Ego. Taking this interpretation, we might note that Lennie seems divorced from the point of view being expressed by his aunt and by the rabbit. Although he is aware of society's views and mores, he is incapable of integrating them into his own behavior. He is wild, like the rabbit, and he is destined to disappoint those who care for him, like Aunt Clara. 


The phrase "crazy" may have powerful implications here as well. If Steinbeck intends for Lennie to be seen as a victim of an unforgiving system, this term becomes more than a colloquial exaggeration. Rather, "crazy" becomes a mark of doom for Lennie because it is a weakness that will make him a target. 


Steinbeck's biographer, Jackson Benson, suggests that Lennie fits a pattern that appears through much of Steinbeck's work and that is informed by a pervasive philosophical attitude. 



"People who act by their dreams are defeated; people who try to change things are usually unsuccessful. The best that man can hope for is to be able to adapt to what is and to survive. There is even a natural selection in his work. The weak, the deformed, the deficient [...] do not survive."



Lennie's hallucinations then might be seen as proof of an inability to adapt that, coupled with a tendency to act by his dreams, set Lennie on a path to certain destruction in the Steinbeck cosmos. Not only is Lennie incapable of integrating socially and thereby adapting, he is incapable of integrating his own psyche. He is a broken man. 


Alternatively, we might see the hallucinations as a simple indication that Lennie was not in control of his own mind and therefore not in control of his own behavior. This helps us to see Lennie as a victim - - a victim of his own weaknesses - - to be pitied and to be understood as a symbol of the difficulties we all face in attempting to live socialized lives in a competitive system. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more