Nearly every Of Mice and Men unit includes some version of a character analysis essay on George and Lennie's relationship. It is a natural entry point for students because the dynamic is central to the plot, but that same familiarity means teachers often see the same handful of arguments repeated essay after essay.

A well designed prompt asks students to move past describing the relationship and toward interpreting it. Instead of "describe George and Lennie's friendship," a stronger version asks students to evaluate whether George's care for Lennie is primarily motivated by loyalty, guilt, obligation, or some combination, and to defend that reading with evidence.

Grading should watch for essays that treat the relationship as static across the whole novella. Strong essays notice how the dynamic shifts, particularly in the final chapters, and explain what changes and why, rather than describing the relationship in the same terms from opening scene to closing scene.

It also helps to require engagement with George's internal conflict specifically, since many student essays focus heavily on Lennie's characterization and treat George as a simpler, more static figure, when in fact his arc carries much of the novella's emotional weight.

What Distinguishes a Strong Response

The best essays on this prompt tend to hold two ideas in tension rather than settling for a single simple explanation. George's motivations are rarely purely one thing, and essays that acknowledge this complexity while still committing to a clear central argument tend to be the most successful.

• Addresses both George's affection for Lennie and the burden it creates for him
• Traces how the relationship changes across the course of the novella
• Uses at least one moment of dialogue to support claims about internal motivation
• Avoids treating Lennie purely as a plot device rather than a character with his own interiority
• Connects the analysis to the novella's ending in a specific, textually grounded way

Guarding Against Reductive Readings of Lennie

Because Lennie's characterization involves a cognitive disability, student essays sometimes fall into reductive language that treats him purely as a burden or purely as a victim, without engaging with him as a fuller character with his own desires and perspective, however limited his ability to express them may be.

Rubric feedback should gently redirect essays that flatten Lennie this way, encouraging students to look for moments where Steinbeck gives him agency or emotional depth, such as his conversations about the rabbits or his memory of Aunt Clara.

Handling the Ending in Student Essays

Nearly every essay on this relationship eventually has to address the novella's final scene, and this is often where writing quality drops as students rush to wrap up rather than analyze carefully. Grading should hold this section to the same analytical standard as the rest of the essay rather than accepting a rushed summary as an adequate conclusion.

Essays that explain the ending in terms of the argument built throughout the paper, rather than simply describing what happens, demonstrate the kind of sustained analytical thinking the assignment is meant to assess.

Feedback That Helps Beyond This One Essay

Character relationship analysis is a skill students will use again in nearly every literature course that follows. Feedback that names the specific analytical move a student did well, such as tracing change over time, gives them a transferable takeaway rather than just a grade on one assignment.

This kind of skill-focused feedback tends to stick with students longer than a general comment about the essay's overall quality.