After Lennie and George had to escape Weed due to Lennie's actions, Lennie’s mental disabilities and obsession with soft things, like mice and rabbits, started to concern George. George doesn’t see how Lennie could possibly change, and he wants someone to confide in.
George tells Slim that Lennie met a young girl in Weed and he asked her if he could touch her soft dress. The girl said, “yes,” but she got scared when Lennie wouldn’t let go of her. Lennie panicked when she started to scream, and the incident only got worse. The girl accused Lennie of rape, and George and Lennie had to escape Weed because some of the town’s men were trying to hunt them down.
Lennie feels a kinship with Slim, as do many of the farm hands on the ranch. Slim is wise and forgiving, and he even protects Lennie when Lennie crushes Curley’s hand. At the end of the novel, Slim tells George that he was right to have killed Lennie because there was little hope for Lennie’s future if he was to be arrested and chained in a jail cell.
What George tells Slim about the incident in Weed is based largely on what Lennie told George while they were on the run from the lynch mob. George was not present when Lennie grabbed the girl's dress. Lennie regularly lies to George, and furthermore Lennie is mentally retarded and doesn't understand his own feelings, motives, or actions.
Steinbeck wrote his novella with the intention of turning it into a stage play almost immediately. According to the Introduction in the eNotes Study Guide, the play came out in New York the same year the book was published. The book is a bit unusual in that most of the exposition is conveyed through dialogue rather than narrative prose. This was obviously intended to make the adaptation to a script form for the stage play quick and easy.
The incident in Weed is very important. Steinbeck has George rehash it with Lennie in the opening chapter, and then he has George repeat it with embellishments to Slim. But the fact that George confides in Slim is not especially significant. Slim is just the most intelligent and the most discreet listener available. George trusts him. Slim may read more into what George tells him than George himself understands.
What really happened in Weed? Lennie went up to a strange girl on the street and grabbed her dress. He told George he just wanted to feel the soft, smooth material. This was probably a lie. Lennie is developing a rather delayed interest in sex which he doesn't understand and can't control. He was probably more attracted to the girl than the dress--but he doesn't tell George that. And George doesn't realize the truth until he sees Curley's wife lying dead in the barn. Then he says to himself:
"I should have knew," George said hopelessly. "I guess maybe way back in my...
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head I did."
George wasn't present when Lennie killed Curley's wife, either. It looks like an accidental homicide in connection with an attempted rape. And that is not very far from the truth! Lennie might have raped Curley's wife if she hadn't started screaming and struggling.
The Weed incident plus the killing of Curley's wife show a definite tendency. Both are related to Lennie's unusual interest in soft little animals, which he always ends up "accidentally" killing. Lennie is becoming a menace to society. George can no longer protect him. He helped Lennie escape from the lynch mob in Weed. He could help him escape from the lynch mob led by Curley. It would be easy, because he is the only one who knows where Lennie is hiding. They could wade across the shallow river and lose themselves up in the mountains on the other side. But George has no intention of helping Lennie this time.
George tells Slim the truth about what happened in Weed; Lennie touched a girl's red dress and she falsely accused him of rape. In turn, they were chased out of town.
*All quotes are taken from the Penguin version of "Of Mice and Men" (1993).
George tells Slim that Lennie got in trouble in Weed because a woman accused him of rape: "Well, he seen this girl in a red dress. Dumb bastard like he is, he wants to touch ever'thing he likes. Juse wants to feel it. So he reaches outto feel this red dress an' the girl lets out a squawk, and that gets Lennie all mixed up, and he holds on 'cause that's the only thing he can think to do. ...Well, that girl rabbits in an' tells the law she been raped. The guys in Weed start a party out to lynch Lennie. ...But he never hurt her. He jus' wanted to touch that red dress..." (Pgs. 41-42)
In the third chapter in Of Mice and Men, why do you think George tells Slim about what has happened in Weed?
The explanation offered by mwestwood is psychologically excellent. Slim seems to be the sort of man in whom some other men might like to confide. In addition it should be noted that Steinbeck wrote his novella with the intention of turning it into a play. This is explained in the Introduction contained in the eNotes Study Guide, which can be accessed by clicking on the reference link below. Evidently Steinbeck made the anticipated conversion simple by conveying most exposition in the form of dialogue. What George is telling Slim about the incident in Weed is simultaneously being told to the reader and will be told to the audience when the book becomes a stage play. Anyone who browses through the book will see that an unusual amount of information which in most novels would be conveyed in straight prose exposition is conveyed in the form of dialogue. As far as the incident in Weed is concerned, there is more exposition in the opening chapter where George is berating Lennie for getting them into serious danger by frightening the girl in the red dress.
In the third chapter in Of Mice and Men, why do you think George tells Slim about what has happened in Weed?
With his "God-like eyes," the character Slim in "Of Mice and Men" is perceptive and kind. Added to these qualities, Slim is subtle. For example, when he and George return to the bunk house and speak about the puppies and Lennie,
Slim moved back slightly so the light was not on his face. 'Funnny how you an' him string along together.' It was Slim's clam invitation to confidence.
Slim also taunts George into explaining about his relationship with Lennie by saying
'It jus'seems kinda funny a cuckoo like him and a smart little guy like you travelin' together.'
George explains, but then "wanted to talk" and Slim
neither encouraged not discouraged him. He just sat back quiet and receptive.
So, when George realizes that Slim is truly listening to him, he confides in the man since he has spent so long without anyone to really talk with who is intelligent and interested. As George continues to talk, Slim compliments Lennie as "a nice fella, and the lonely George who "began to lay out his solitaire hand" begins to trust Slim and, thus, reveals what has happened in Weed with the girl in a red dress.
This section of "Of Mice and Men" underscores the terrible aloneness of the itinerant workers and man's basic need for brotherhood. In their conversation, George mentions that it is bad for men to go around on the ranches alone:
That ain't no good. They don't have no fun. After a long time they get mena. They get wantin' to fight all the time.
As Joseph Conrad wrote in his short story, "Meaning depends upon sharing"; George finds meaning in his life by talking with the kind Slim.
In Of Mice and Men, how does Slim convince George to talk about his past relationship with Lennie and what happened in Weed?
Slim has a mysterious way about him: a sage-like air that George is receptive to. One would think that George would resent Slim's repeated remarks about the oddity of two men traveling together, as George and Lennie do, when migrant workers overall tend to travel alone—to work a month in one place and then simply move on. But it is as if the calm insistence by Slim on this one point has the opposite effect on George; he senses that Slim is not asking about Lennie in a negative or hostile way but rather out of sympathy or merely benign curiosity.
We are told that Slim's manner is such that he is neither encouraging nor discouraging George from talking. And George realizes that, for his own sake, he must talk to someone about Lennie. The story of what Lennie did in Weed becomes both a foreshadowing of the eventual catastrophe that is to occur and an explanation for it. In his uncomprehending way, Lennie has a tendency to hold onto something when he panics, but he doesn't know his own potentially-fatal physical power.
The laconic Slim is the ideal listener for George, even appearing "Godlike" in his way. His gift of the puppy to Lennie has already convinced George that Slim is sympathetic to Lennie, and among the generally rough migrant workers, Slim's gentle strength enables George to trust him fully.