Violence In Of Mice And Men Essay

Near the town of Soledad in California, there is a ranch with many hardworking and tough ranch hands. This is the setting for Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men. This ranch has a cold, harsh, and “mean” atmosphere. Here, violence works as a precursor for actions that are even more alarming. Because America is going through the Great Depression, life is not always humane and neither are the people living through it. In Of Mice and Men violence serves as a catalyst for all of the important events in the novel.
While Lennie and George are in Weed, Lennie feels a girl’s dress and will not let go causing Lennie and George to leave Weed and travel to Soledad where the important events of the novel occur. When Lennie began to feel the dress, the girl
Lennie touches Curley’s wife’s hair and then when she tells him that he is petting too hard he gets scared and starts to choke her. When she starts screaming he covers her mouth and nose and starts to shake her, breaking her neck. George told Lennie that if he ever gets in trouble to return to the brush where they spend the night and hide in the brush. Lennie goes back and when George comes he kills Lennie. “An’... he said... an’ hide in the brush till he come... And George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it close to the back of Lennie’s head... He pulled the trigger.”(106)
Does violence always serve as a catalyst for important events? In most cases brutality does lead to significant circumstances. Violence can lead to the offender’s going to jail, which, to the average person, is a life-changing event. Brutality often results in someone’s getting hurt or even killed. In Of Mice and Men, especially, violence serves as a catalyst for important events. Lennie and George had to run away from Weed, Curley’s wife was killed, and finally, Lennie died, all due to the violence that prefaced these