Foreshadowing In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

In John Steinbeck’s novel “Of Mice and Men” Steinbeck expertly uses foreshadowing to prelude many surprising events in the ending. From the very beginning we can predict what will happen to the two main characters: Lennie and George. It is used to hint at future events concerning Lennie’s death.
First, Steinbeck uses foreshadowing to hint at Curley's wife's’ death and that Lennie killed her through the mouse's death early in the novel, and the dog's death mere pages before. Lennie had killed the mouse as he had the puppy. He was killing and killing bigger and bigger things. His Aunt Clara had known that eventually he would kill again and had stopped giving him things to “play with”, did she know that he would have to be stopped? “An’ she stopped …show more content…
Same as Candy’s old dog. “I ought to of shot that dog myself, George, I shouldn’t ought to of let no stranger shoot my dog.” (pg 61). In this metaphor, Candy is George and Candy’s dog is Lennie. When Lennie kills Curley’s wife George knows that Curley is going to kill Lennie. But he was not going to let “some stranger” shoot him. He was going to do that himself, that way he would die in peace instead of like Curley would have done. “I’ll kill the son-of-a-bitch myself. I’ll shoot ‘im in the guts.” (pg 96) Here, Curley makes it known to all that he was going to make Lennie suffer and George was not about to let him do that. Perhaps because Lennie was already dead to him. Meaning that we also know from foreshadowing that George will always be the one to kill …show more content…
Lennie had a mouse that was dead and George threw it “across to the other side”. “ George took the mouse and threw it across the pond to the other side among the brush.” (pg 6) Here, Lennie is the mouse, George is George and Curley and the others are Lennie. In the beginning George takes the mouse and throws it to the other side he takes care of it before Lennie can. In the same way George killed Lennie before Curley could and he “took care of it”. George took care of the mouse by throwing it to the “other side” since he killed Lennie and death is referred to as the “other side”. Correspondingly, that the mouse might be dead, Lennie could have been already dead to George-as soon as he saw Curley’s wife’s body lying on the ground. He knew that he would have to kill Lennie and maybe he always did. “I guess maybe way back in my head I did.” (pg 94) Perhaps that was why he could kill Lennie, because he knew that Curley would, that he would have to kill him and in that respect Lennie was already