Power In Of Mice And Men

Plato is credited with having said, “ The measure of a man is what he does with power.” Power is best known for being able to corrupt people, and those people only using power for their own means to an end. But power is also able to get people to follow orders, or bad down from a bad decision. It can even be used positively, to help both whoever is using it and whoever encounters it or inspire others. In the novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Candy, Curley, and George each use or encounter power in positive and negative ways.

George, one of the main characters of the book, is shown most often interacting with Lennie, conversing, cajoling, and even threatening him. Due to how early his instance of using power is in the book, he ends up using the power on Lennie. However, due to their relationship and Lennie’s intelligence, he uses reward power to make
He is also the only one who consciously defers to that power. However, just because he consciously acknowledges the power doesn’t mean that he agrees with it. When Slim puts in his opinion, that sealed the fate of Candy’s dog, as “Candy looked helplessly at him, for Slim’s opinions were law”(Steinbeck 50). The quote illustrates how he feels that he doesn’t really have a choice in the matter and that he defers to Slim because Slim is the superior in the level of skill, showcasing expert power. But it also shows that he was fully aware of Slim’s power and deliberately chose to acquiesce to it. The characters of George, Curley, and Candy all each either use or encounter power, whether in a negative or positive way. Just as Plato said, the way that they dealt with the power shows what type of person they are. While it may not have shown all the most important aspects of who they are, enough characteristics were portrayed when they dealt with power that a reader could get a sense of who the character was, and what type of person they