We can make the situation end differently, but George being his friend and knowing the conditions that Lennie is in I think it was a way of ending the story. George didn 't want Lennie to suffer .So he decided to just shoot him. They could 've just let him go to jail but he would suffer. He could either die in jail by other inmates, get executed if he resisted. I don 't think George was Lennies true friend because they both didn 't like Curley. They wanted to get a farm together with many animals. They had no family and traveled together. The point was that they had nobody to depend on but themselves. So just because George was a bit smarter than Lennie didn 't mean he had to shoot him and continue being friends with the others. George