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Lennie and George have a relationship full of friendship and love in the novel “Of Mice And Men” by John Steinbeck. We mainly see the relationship in the first and last chapters of the book. We also see how Lennie wishes that George could have a life without burdens and Georges protective feel over Lennie.

Steinbeck shows us the friendship between Lennie and George when Lennie says “cause I can jus’ as well go away, George, and live in a cave.” This shows the reader that Lennie wants George to be able to have a life without burdens, he wants him to be able to not have to always look out for him. George replies to Lennie saying “You can jus’ as well go to hell, shut up now” This is showing the reader that George does not always think of George as a burden, he wants to have Lennie around and he does not want Lennie to be out in the world on his own in case something happens to him. There friendship is also show when George says “We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us.” Thus showing us that George doesn’t think of Lennie as a separate person, he thinks of him as part of himself. He does not seem top think of himself as his own person as Lennie is always apart of him.

The love in the relationship between Lennie and George is shown when Steinbeck writes “George raised the gun and his hand shook, and he dropped his hand to the ground again” This shows us that their relationship runs deeper than at first sight. Even though George knows that Lennie will be suffering at the hand of Curley if George does not kill him, he is still struggling to do this. This is showing the reader that George is having trouble thinking of a life without Lennie, he doesn’t want to have to think of being on his own. We also see this love when George says “Guys like us got no fambly,” then Lennie replies with “But not us” This is showing us that even though George and Lennie are not biological brothers they have each other, they don’t think of each other as just close friends but more like brothers. Both of them would struggle without the other, if one of them was killed it would be less like loosing a friend and more like losing a brother.

We also see that George is very protective of Lennie, this is because he does not want anything bad to happen to Lennie because he couldn’t stand to lose him, we see this when Lennie says “If I get in any trouble you ‘aint gunna let me tend to the rabbits” This shows us that George will even threaten Lennie so that he doesn’t make things difficult for himself, he wants to be sure that Lennie does not do anything stupid that could get him hurt. We see this also when George says “What the hell’s he got on his shoulder Lennie didn’t do anything to him.” This is showing that George wants people to know that Lennie is innocent and he didn’t do anything so nothing bad could happen to Lennie. George cares about Lennie to much to imagine a life full of grief knowing that he caused something bad to happen to Lennie.

Lennie cares deeply about George and does not like the fact that he is more of burden to George, we can see that Lennie wants George to be able to live his life while not having to treat Lennie like a child and having to basically helping Lennie across the road, he doesn‘t want George to always be looking out for Lennie. Lennie says “Well I could, I could go off in the hills there. Someplace I’d find a cave.: This is Lennie’s way of saying I know I am a burden, I know you would be better off without me and I want you to have that life. Lennie wants to see George happy and not always in protective older brother mode. Lennie does not want George to leave him, but he also wants George to be able to be his own person.

In the novel “Of Mice And Men” by John Steinbeck, Steinbeck writes about Lennie and Georges relationship, this relationship is built on the way they travel together. We see the friendship in the first and last few chapters when Lennie wants to leave so that George can have an easy life and when George doesn’t want to let Lennie go. As the novel progresses we begin to see how deep and meaningful their relationship is, we see that it is less of a friendship and more of a brotherly love. We see this love mainly when George is struggling to kill Lennie because it would be hard to have him leave.