There are striking similarities between the types of violence humans inflict in Steinbeck’s novella Of Mice and Men and Robert Burns’ poem "To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough”. In the poem, Burns narrates a situation where, while plowing, accidentally destroys a mouse’s home for the winter. So even though he was unintentional in the causing of distress, it still happened. This situation draws parallels to Lennie inadvertently making George’s life hard and hurting those around him in Of Mice and Men. The characters in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men demonstrate an array of physical and psychological violence towards each other. For example, George is emotionally abusive to Lennie for the entirety of the book,”’You said I …show more content…
Even starting in the first chapter physical violence is used frequently. An example being,“Lennie hesitated, backed away, looked wildly at the brush line as though he contemplated running for his freedom. George said coldly, ‘You gonna give me that mouse or do I have to sock you?’"(__) this shows how Lennie may only respond to violence most likely due to the fact that mentally he is a small child. A large amount of the interactions in this novella are those of violence; the most memorable one taking place in the very last pages when George killed Lennie once he realized that Lennie’s actions, even if they weren’t understood, were violent nonetheless and that would just repeat themselves and needed to be stopped. The act of painlessly shooting Lennie through the back of the head could be debated as an example of euthanasia. This is because George prevented Lennie from further pain caused by the other ranch men - if they had caught him, they would have tortured Lennie instead letting him die in peace. With this one action George euthanised the entire situation. If Lennie had lived and escaped, the two of them wouldn’t have been able to achieve their dream of living off the fat of the land and George understood that Lennie wasn’t developed enough to comprehend his own actions - let alone stop them from