Another sign pointing to the ruining of their “American dream” is when George says the sentence
“You get in trouble. You do bad things and I got to get you out.”
Lennie is also told that if he gets into serious trouble, he is to run back to the place in the brush where they had been the night before .In the first chapter there are many signs of an impending tragedy even though we only know about the two main characters in the story. The fact that it is not possible for George to watch him all the time again suggests that Lennie will get into trouble; it seems predictable.
When George and Lennie turn up at the ranch, an old man called Candy who has an old dog, greets them. After their brief introductions George and Lennie walk over to a house where the boss is sitting behind a desk in one of the rooms. He is a very crabby man and has a short temper. He has a violent son who likes boxing. Straight away this is clear that something bad is going to happen on the ranch because of the unfriendly atmosphere. They then meet some other people in the bunkhouse where they are to sleep whilst on the ranch. Within minutes of arriving, Curley’s wife wanders in and stands in the doorframe. She hasn’t been treated very well by Curly and wants attention and she doesn’t mind whom she gets it off. She charms Lennie at this point as she is standing with the sun rays behind, her making the shape of her body stand out. He thinks she is pretty and nice, although George will not let him have anything to do with her as she is the wife of the boss Curley and that it would only create more trouble. The author is hinting at the tragedy again.
“I seen ‘em poison before, but I have never seen no piece of jail bait worse than her. You leave her be.”
Further on in the story, one of the workers on the farm called Carlson is trying to convince Candy to have his dog shot because its helpless, old and smelly. Further, Carlson says the phrase
“I wisht somebody’d shoot me if I get old an’ a cripple”.
These two ‘signs’ allude to the fact that again Steinbeck is cleverly hinting at something to do with the ending of George and Lennie’s ‘American dream’. Parallel of Lennie (dog) is that they are both dependant on someone “He no good to himself”
Whilst George and Lennie are talking with Candy about getting their own farm, Curley bursts in looking for his wife. He sees Lennie cheerful (happily engrossed at the thought of the farm) and being the violent person that he is thinks that Lennie is smirking at the fact that his wife is running away from him all of the time. He walked over to Lennie “What the hell you laughin’ at?” he said. Lennie almost jumped from his daze. Here, Curly loses his anger and begins to fight with Lennie, although he is not trying to fight back as he is confused. Finally, George steps in to look after Lennie and shouts “Get ‘im Lennie”. After shouting this a second time, Lennie grasped one of Curley’s hands crushing it with mammoth power. Lennie is still confused and angry. This is quite an important clue in the story as it shows the first time that trouble takes place and if it has happened once something will happen later in the story. He doesn’t know his own strength he is like a terrier when they are in fear they just hold on tighter. This suggests that if he is pushed like this again it may lead to a death especially if George is not there to stop him.
As the story draws to a close, Lennie is sitting in the stable while all of the other men are outside playing in a horseshoe tournament, hanging onto the dead body of one of the puppies that he was to be having when it was a bit older. He had been stroking it to hard so this had killed it because Lennie can’t control his strength. Steinbeck refers back the point of Lennie’s strength. The repetitions of phrases referring to Lennie’s strength all create a sign that this strength will get him into a lot of trouble. We then find that Curley’s wife enters the stable to find Lennie sitting there with body of the puppy covered in straw. She is somewhat startled by this but forgets about it and says that he could have one of the other pups. Lennie has been told by George not to talk to Curley’s wife as she would get him into trouble, but he is that fascinated by her. Now Steinbeck give details of the wrong doings as they both begin to talk about how Lennie likes soft attractive things and how Curley’s wife likes to stroke her hair because it is lovely and soft. She lets him stroke it but he gets out of control and strokes it harder, Lennie now begins to panic and the event in Weeds comes back into mind at this point. He holds on firm in all of the commotion and with a scream, he puts his hand over her mouth to soften the sound. “Please don’t,” he pleaded and with that she continued to scream. He was puzzled and angry now and shook her. She had stopped moving it was now obvious that he had broken her neck. At this point in the story, it is clear to see that all of the preceding clues given are coming together to for the end of the story. With all the references to his immense strength, Steinbeck has put these into one when Lennie kills Curley’s wife creating the sense that this is the beginning of the end for George and Lennie’s dream. Candy found the body and went to find George goes to find him. Candy buys them some time until he tells the rest of the group.
Everyone came running in to the barn to see what was going on and all fingers were soon pointing at Lennie for killing Curley’s wife. “I guess we gotta get him” was a phrase soon to follow the occurring events. Some of the men hurried off to get some guns and came back with two guns of the three guns, one was missing “No, it’s been took”. Curley wanted revenge badly and so, set off with the others on horseback in search of Lennie. Meanwhile, George set off on foot knowing exactly where Lennie would be. This is another big clue that there will be another tragedy.
George finds Lennie in the brush. Lennie yet again asks George to tell him about the farm they are going to live on. He tells Lennie to take off his hat and look down across the river and Lennie does so. George begins to talk about the farm and the rabbits slowly, shakily raising the stolen gun in his hand to the back of Lennie’s head. By now the other men were getting close and so George continued to talk, he steadied the gun in his shaking hand and he pulled the trigger killing Lennie with the single shot. This very sad part of the story reminds us of the situation with Candy and his dog along with the phrase said by Carlson
Overall, in this book, I feel that the sense of impending tragedy through the chapters is not as obvious as it may seem to be to start with. There are many ways in which Steinbeck has created tragedies as part of the different situations throughout, although I feel that the true tragedy of the story occurs at the end when Lennie is killed ‘lovingly’ by his friend. George and Lennie had been together for most of their lives and know because of a permanent flaw in Lennie’s character, he has to be killed. His best friend sees this as his task, making the story a tragedy when Lennie is killed. George kills him to save him from further suffering (at the hands of curly or by ending up in prison).
So the tragedy is that George will be lonely like all the others and he had to kill his best friend. There American dream is over!
