Failure In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

In John Steinbeck’s novella Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck uses a line from Robert Burns poem “To a Mouse” to portray the theme that the main characters failure is inevitable; the forces acting upon this are Lennie’s display of his growing disability, and that nobody believes they can do it, plus the men’s inability to stay in one place. First of all, Steinbeck uses Lennie’s growing disability as a force acting on the main characters inevitable failure. After taking away a dead mouse, George said, “that mouse ain’t fresh, Lennie; and besides you’ve broke it pettin’ it” (9). This is the first time we see that Lennie is capable of hurting small things down to killing them. He did proclaim that he didn’t kill the mouse but George told the readers that this isn’t the first

She let him touch her hair since it was soft and he likes soft things, but then he held on when she wanted him to let go. She started screaming and moving around then Lennie said “Don’t you go yellin’,’ he said, and he shook her … and then she was still, for Lennie had broken her neck” (91). Lennie proves that he isn’t a safe person anymore when he did this act. It’s one thing to kill a mouse, or a puppy, but now it is another human. Not saying the animals weren’t bad. The workers are more concerned with the dead women they find. They all knew it was Lennie and they knew they had to get rid of him. This is Lennie’s peak of his disability that the reader gets shown. George knew it the moment he saw the dead girl that there was no way they were getting out of this one. Lennie’s disability is a huge force that made the main characters success definitely inevitable. Lennie put a man hunt on himself making it impossible for them to get the money they need to buy some land. Towards the end of the book George finds Lennie in their hiding spot and George knew what he had to do. He made Lennie imagine the land they were gonna buy, then “he pulled the trigger” (106).