Out of pity, George kills Lennie.
"Tell me 'bout them rabbits, George. I want to touch them rabbits" - Lennie's recurrent quote
Lennie Small is a tall and burly, kind, loyal and caring, but intellectually disabled man who is George's primary companion and is taken care of by George because of his mental disabilities.
He is kind, doesn’t like to cause problems, and he loves to pet soft things such as the puppies or the dead mouse. He tends to hurt the things that he touches, not because he meant to, because he doesn't know his own strength.
He may not be mentally advanced but he can follow simple instructions, such as bucking barley and driving a cultivator. He is very loyal to George, and their relationship has been described as a dog and his master (much more prevalent, Steinbeck described Lennie's hands as paws), and a child and his parent. Lennie may have Autism but his exact disability is unknown.
Backstory[]
Lennie's Aunt, Clara, adopted him as a child and took care of him while fulfilling his extra needs. When Aunt Clara died, George was left to care for Lennie. Lennie and George stayed together, doing work around the country.
In Weed, Lennie saw a girl's soft dress and started touching it. She wanted him to stop and started screaming at Lennie. Then, George came along and whacked him in the head with a fence and Lennie let go of the dress. The girl ran away and told the law that Lennie raped her. A party of men in Weed set out to lynch Lennie, and the two fled. George and Lennie lost them after hiding in an irrigation ditch, and then hopped on a train to where they are now.
Death[]
Lennie, during a conversation with Curley's Wife, started stroking her hair. She reacted negatively to this because he was messing it up and creeping her out, and she started yelling at him.
He didn't want to get in trouble for doing this, so he covered her mouth and started shaking her to get her to stop screaming, but shook her too hard and snapped her neck, killing her. They stated she "flopped like a fish" when she died.
He fled to the brush where he and George first went in the start of the book and where George told him to fled if they got in trouble, and started hallucinating about his Aunt Clara, who scolded him for his lack of independence from George and being a burden. Then, a large rabbit came out and started insulting Lennie.
As the hallucinations started dying away, George came and told Lennie about their American Dream. He told Lennie that they could do it right now. Lennie was happy about it, and George told him to look at the river. George then pointed Carlson's luger to the back of Lennie's head, pulled the trigger and killed him.