Proper

Abstract

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck has been famous for a large extension of the reading public and its version of plays and films. However, the last scene where George kills his best friend Lennie, understood as a kind of euthanasia. As to this paradoxical ending, most critics maintain that Steinbeck throws a question to readers by its ambiguous meaning that can be interpreted non-teleologically as it happened. However, the tragedy is intended from the beginning by the inharmonious relationship between the two men caused by their personality traits and environmental handicaps and the contingent factor that Lennie meets Curley’s wife, a sort of femme fatale. This paper aims to observe the three variables leading to their sad fate by analyzing them based on the texts and other scholars’ ideas. After that, George’s act is not justifiable from Lennie’s perspective. Moreover, it is revealed that a dominant and subordinate relationship between friends is liable to invite misfortune, which is more dangerous to weaker people.