This TedTalk talks about compassion and how it keeps the world running. Compassion in a major theme in Of Mice and Men. Lennie, the best friend of George, is a big, sweet guy. He has an obsession with stroking soft things. He has taken mice and a puppy to pet, but every time he ends up killing the animal. The last straw of his liking of soft things was killing Curley’s wife. The incident was an accident, but the men of the group wanted him killed. Lennie only had compassion for the animals and didn’t mean to harm them.
The speaker of the Ted Talk, Joan Halifax, is a Buddhist priest that helps people around the world cope with death. She has traveled to places like India and Nepal and has seen the true works of compassion. She worked in prisons and on death row to see what went wrong with their compassion. If the men had compassion for Lennie, he would have not been killed. They would have realized it was a mistake, and settled the murder the humane way. George was the only one who understood that Lennie was coming from a good place. Even though George shot Lennie, I believe he still has compassion. He wanted Lennie to feel no pain and not be expecting to die. He knew Lennie was going to die a long, painful death in both situations of going to jail and being placed to hang, or getting shot in the gut by the others and suffering. In the end, George saved Lennie of the painful death and ended Lennie’s life in the least painful option he had at the time. |
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