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John Steinbeck's 'To A Mouse': Chapter Analysis

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“The best laid schemes often go awry…” says Robert Burns in his poem “To a Mouse”. Men can often lose sight of their final goal (even if only for a short period of time) and get too cocky as the end goal looms closer and closer. In Steinbeck’s novella, the reader is introduced to Crooks in the fourth chapter. Crooks is talking to Lennie and he asks Lennie where George is, “...And where’s George now? In town in a whore house”. (76) In chapter three George tells Lennie and the reader that he’s been invited to go into town with them, so would he be using his own money or theirs? Coming from the standpoint that George was invited, it is possible that he is using the others money, not his own (or Lennies’ for that matter). Next, George tells the reader that he should have seen Lennie’s behavior getting worse. …show more content…

(94) Later, when he’s talking to Candy, George says, “I think I knowed it from the very first. I think I knowed we’d never do her [live on a farm all by themselves]. He usta like to hear about it so much I got to thinking maybe we would”. (94) In these few lines George realizes his mistakes. His first mistake is not seeing and understanding that Lennie was getting worse and worse - from petting a dead mouse to killing a person. His second mistake was having a big dream, and mistaking it for a

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