Of Mice and Men (week 2)

The author influences me to view people with mental disabilities as completely helpless. He makes them seem as if they can’t do anything for themselves and if they try to it will only leads to disaster. In the novel he supports this by having anything Lennie does by himself turn into something bad. From my perspective, Steinbeck looks down on mentally challenged people and doesn’t have a lot of respect for them. He seems to think that just because of their disability they have to be watched at all times and have to constantly have special care. The novel affects how I think about people with mental disabilities because it helps me to realize that they really do have extremely complicated lives and that it is a lot more of a serious issue than I thought. Some of the characters in the book, especially Curley, treat Lennie like he is worthless. They don’t give him any second chances when they should because he is a good person, but because of his disability he has trouble controlling himself at times. Since the time of this novel people with mental disabilities are treated a lot different. People now realize that just because someone has a mental disability doesn’t mean that they should get any less respect than someone without a disability. The mentally challenged were rarely accepted into society and not many people wanted to help them back then where as today it is the opposite.