The Ending

I think the ending of Of Mice and Men was definitely appropriate. Though it was certainly very tragic and depressing, I honestly don't think it could have ended any other way. The book was never set up to be one of those happy, "this-is-the-power-of-dreams-kids!" kind of book -- instead it was written as a realistic portrayal of life. From the very beginning of the novella, I was sure that something would happen to prevent Lennie and George from realizing their dream. Of course, I didn't really think that this barrier would come in the form of people dying -- I was shocked that Curley's wife ended up being killed. I knew from the foreshadowing that there would be some kind of situation with Lennie and Curley's wife, but I thought it would just be some kind of misunderstanding that would result in Lennie and George being fired from their jobs on the ranch, therefore not earning the money they needed to buy their plot of land.

I think the most tragic part of the ending for me wasn't actually when George shot Lennie. It was when Lennie accidentally killed Curley's wife. She did nothing to deserve this fate -- she was just a lonely person who was finally finding some company in Lennie. She didn't need to die.

Lennie, on the other hand, did need to die. It sounds harsh to say that, and one could argue that there were other options available, but really, there weren't. At that point in the book, George and Lennie were out of options. He also needed to die from an entertainment point of view. If the book ended with George and Lennie running away, fugitives once more, it would not have the same emotional effect on the reader. The tension all builds to that final scene with George and Lennie, and if George put the gun away and led Lennie to hide in the bush, planning their escape, it would feel like a bit of a letdown. The shooting is the finale to all of the previous tense, emotional scenes, and without a clear ending like that there would be no feeling of closing for the reader.

Some people have complained about the last line, but I think that it works very well. In that one line, Steinbeck manages to subtly convey many things: "And Carlson said, 'Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin' them two guys?'"

Yes, this line seems sudden, out of place, and confusing. Shouldn't Carlson know why George and Slim are upset? But this is the point Steinbeck was trying to communicate. Curley and Carlson are such different kinds of people from George and Slim. They have never had a close emotional attachment to another person in the way that George and Lennie did, so they cannot begin to understand how difficult George's position was. In fact, Carlson seems to hold a similar position in this scenario as he did when he pressured Candy to let him shoot his dog. The dog was useless, so he couldn't understand why Candy would still feel attached to it. Lennie had committed a crime, so he couldn't understand why George would feel bad about shooting him. Carlson is unable to empathize with either Candy or George in these scenarios because he has never had those feelings of attachment to anything.

In terms of the abruptness of the line, I think that was also a conscious decision on Steinbeck's part. Lennie may have just died, but life goes on. His death does not affect Curley or Carlson at all -- they are totally removed from the situation. This final line puts everything in context for the reader. Yes, Lennie's death will have a massive effect on George, but in the big picture, nothing has changed. His death does not change the world any more than the death of the mice did.

This brings me to the connection between Of Mice and Men and Robert Burns' poem, To a Mouse. Burns' poem starts off by recognizing the similarities between himself, a man, and a mouse. He writes about how neither of them really have any control over their lives, even if they plan. This is exemplified in the passages where he refers to how the mouse's home  has just been run over by his plough. "The best-laid schemes o' mice and men," he writes, "Gang aft agley,/An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,/For promis'd joy!" Here he is stating how even the most carefully planned plans can easily go awry, leaving the planner with nothing but sadness where they could have had happiness. This connects to Of Mice and Men in the sense that George and Lennie, even after all of their planning, were not able to achieve their dream.

In the final stanza of the poem discusses how the mouse is, however, luckier than the man, at least in one respect. "Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me," says Burns of the mouse. "The present only toucheth thee:/But, Och! I backward cast my e'e./On prospects drear!/An' forward, tho' I canna see,/I guess an' fear!

Because the mouse lives only in the present, it is not as affected by the man in these changes of plans. It deals with the change and moves on, able to adapt. The man, on the other hand, dwells on the failures of the past, and worries about the future. George will have to live his life haunted by Lennie's death, cursed to always think about what could have been.

A connection between Lennie and the mouse can be made here. George may be a man, having to live the rest of his life thinking about how his plan went awry, but Lennie does not have to deal with the dream not coming true. His death means that he will always just be frozen in that moment, that peaceful moment as he sat and listened to George tell him what the future would hold. Lennie no longer needs to be apprehensive of the future, or dwell upon the past -- he is free from this, the greatest hardship of being a human.