Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is throughout the story, Of Mice and Men, even if it's not always apparent at the time. The biggest foreshadow was between how Candy's dog died and how Lennie died at the end of the novel. Using the same luger this example is the perfect to show one of the many foreshadowing events in the story. All the farmers are sitting around talking when Candy's dog walked in and made the room stink. Carlson stated," Look Candy. This ol' dog jus' suffers hisself all the time. If you was to take him out and shoot him right in the back of the head -" he pointed, " right there, why he'd never know what hit him"(Steinbeck 45). This sets up the foreshadow of the ending to the novel. The action that goes along with this is after Lennie killed Curley's wife. George found Lennie near the river bank and started telling Lennie the story about the house and how he wasn't mad at him. George got Carlson's gun, the same one to shoot Candy's dog, off of Lennie. Then George told Lennie to take off his hat and feel the breeze: " And George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it close to the back of Lennie's head. The hand shook violently, but his face set and his hands steadied. He pulled the trigger"(Steinbeck 106). Sadly George had to kill Lennie, but it was in the same fashion of killing Candy's dog. Carlson's luger was the weapon and the back of the head was the target. The critic Howard Levant showed his opinion against the amounts of foreshadowing in the novel. He stated, " In fact, Steinbeck uses every possible device to thin out the effect of the materials. Foreshadowing is overworked. Lennie's murder of Curley's wife is the catastrophe that George has been dreading from the start. It is precisely the fate that a fluffy animal like Curley's wife should meet at the hands of Lennie, who has already killed mice and a puppy with his overpowering tenderness. When Curley's wife makes clear her intention to seduce the first available man and the course of events abandons Lennie to her, the result is inevitable."(Levant) I would have to disagree with Mr. Levant. I don't believe that the foreshadowing was overworked. I think it made the story ironic and made the reader more interested in the novel. Foreshadowing is all throughout Of Mice and Men. It depends on your opinion if you enjoy it or dislike how much there is. Fact is that if you engulf yourself in this novel you will come across foreshadowing.