Of Mice and Men

Homework: Write a commentary on the series of deaths throughout OMM – Mouse, Candy’s Dog, Puppy, Curley’s Wife and Lennie.

The significance of the five deaths, which occur in “Of Mice And Men” are linked by an ascending order of size and life expectancy. This is evident through the many harsh conditions each character lived in. The small mouse was expected to have an early death in the hands of Lennie. An aspect of human-animal extermination occurs several times throughout the novel as a strong theme of death. Furthermore, Candy’s dog was destined to die due to old age, weakness and lack of acceptance by the workers. However, the puppy’s unintentional death was due to Lennie as he was incapable of controlling his anger. From this observation readers can deduce that even if the two itinerant workers hadn’t come to the ranch, the puppy would have died from the harsh conditions on the ranch hereafter. Curley’s wife expectancy was expected as somewhat longer than other characters as she was able to get herself out of trouble for she is a woman and she has the power to easily entice the men. Instead, her and her dreams of being a showgirl died because of Lennie’s uncontrollable violence. Towards the end of the novel, Lennie’s life expectancy became unpredictable, as he was a murderer of nature. However, Steinbeck portrays Lennie as indestructible but mentally weak. The fact that Slim drowns four of his pups and keeps the biggest implies that life on the ranch depends on the survival of the fittest.

Lennie’s obsession to petting soft things was a dangerous aspect of him yet people such as Curley’s wife and the small mouse were too weak to be released from him. There is an explicit link between the mouse, puppy and Curley’s Wife as they both died in a similar way of literally being ‘cuddled to death’. Lennie overly loved the mouse, puppy and woman yet they didn’t know that he has an uncontrollable addiction towards small cuddly animals, which implies that he is...