Of Mice and Men

Of Mice and Men Final Draft To use violence or not to use violence, that is the question that every author aspiring to write a novel must ask. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck is about two men working ranches out west and How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster is about literary symbolism, and they both refer to violence. How to Read Literature Like a Professor explains violence and its significance, and Of Mice and Men includes violence as major plot events. How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster in Chapter 11 refers to violence and what it means. In this chapter Foster writes “Violence is one of the most personal and even intimate acts between human beings, but it can also be cultural and societal in its implications.” ( Foster 88) This quote describes how violence is always meaning more than just simply violence. Violence can be symbolic, thematic, or even biblical in its meaning, but it is never just violence for violence’s sake. In Of Mice and Men’s case, the violence was symbolic in a foreshadowing way. This quote takes place while George and Lennie are in the wilderness thinking of memories, and Lennie remembers this memory. “I’d pet ‘em, and pretty soon they bit my fingers and I pinched their heads a little and then they was dead—because they was so little.” (Steinbeck 10) This quote is foreshadowing of how Lennie will kill Curly’s wife later in the book, because she does something mean to him like the mouse and then he does something to stop her, just like he stopped the mouse. He also ended up killing both the mouse and Curly’s wife. To the reader this shows that Steinbeck carefully intertwined symbolism into his novel in the form of foreshadowing. As demonstrated, How to Read Literature Like a Professor was right in saying that violence is always more than violence, and Of Mice and Men is an excellent example of that. Whether violence is biblical, thematic, or symbolic in its usage, it always adds the electricity