Of Mice And Men Foreshadowing

Of Mice and men’ is novella written by the author John Steinbeck. The novella is incorporated with numerous narrative techniques to engage its audience. Some of these narrative techniques include – foreshadowing, dialogue, and animal imagery.

In the novel, foreshadowing was used numerous times to hint future events throughout the story. For e.g. In the following quote, George foretells Lennie’s death,”I want you to stay with me, Lennie. Jesus Christ, somebody'd shoot you for a coyote if you was by yourself." (Steinbeck 15). Interestingly enough, George is right. When Lennie spends a significant amount of time alone and without George, he ends up committing an accidental murder. This results into George unwillingly killing Lennie. Steinbeck

Carlson foretells how Lennie is going to die while insisting candy to kill the dog, "if you was to take him out and shoot him right in the back of the head" he leaned over and pointed “right there, why he’d never know” – (Steinbeck 45). The climax scene is no different. When George shoots Lennie, he puts an effort into causing Lennie less pain, therefore shooting him in the method Carlson describes. Unlike the other foreshadowing examples, Curley’s wife’s death wasn’t hinted using any particular dialogue but was hinted towards with the building up of several events. Steinbeck early on introduces to Lennie’s fascination with soft objects and his child-like brain. This was primarily described through the weed incident, where Lennie clasps onto a lady’s dress because of its soft and tactile fabric, leading to him and George having to run away as girl accuses him of assault. This incident demonstrated that Lennie was obsessed with soft objects and he didn’t understand the limitations of society. Lennie’s inability to control his strength is then indicated through the ‘killing of the puppy incident’, where Lennie accidentally snaps a puppy’s neck, consequently killing

Steinbeck used dialogues to describe the characters and their relationships with each other and the plot. In a narrative literature, the reader can only know as much as the narrator or author reveals. In contrast, using dialogue can reveal a whole different side of a character. Dialogue is primarily used to engage the reader. Without the narrator revealing everything about the character, the reader is left to judge and interpret the character for themselves, including the attitude and emotion of the character . For example: “o you forgot that awready, did you? I gotta tell you again, do I?”- pg 4. the following quote reveals that Lennie is forgetful and needs to be told what to do. It also reveals that George can sometimes lose his patience with Lennie. We can figure all this out with just a single dialogue. Furthermore, The story of ‘of mice and men’ is written in third person perspective. Therefore, comically engaging the reader without dialogue is merely impossible. That’s why Steinbeck integrated dialogues in of ‘mice and