Amanda, Hannah, Derrick, North
English p. 3
September 10, 2013
Of Mice and Men – Quotes
“He worked himself into a fury. ‘I’m gonna get him. I’m going for my shotgun. I’ll kill the big son-of-a-b**** myself. I’ll shoot ‘im in the guts. Come on you guys. ‘ He ran furiously out of the barn.” (page. 96)
The men clearly state their intensions for after they find Lennie. George attempts to hang back, but Curly becomes suspicious and forces him to come along on the search party. Although it is wrong to harm or murder anyone, George shows mercy to Lennie with a painless, quick death as opposed to the torturous one he would receive from Curly. Lennie’s last memory is talking with George about their hopes and dreams of getting a place of their own.
“We might,” he said. ‘If we could keep Curley in, we might. But Curley’s gonna want to shoot im.” (pg.97)
In this quote it basically verifies that Curley will want Lennie dead for what he did for killing his wife. George knows that Lennie has a good chance of being caught and killed by Curley and George does not want Lennie to be killed in that manner, he solves this problem by giving Lennie mercy by killing him himself.
“….because I got you ‘an I got you. We got eachother, that’s what…” (pg 104)
This quote shows that George cared about Lennie and wanted to make sure he was in good hands before he died. His death was more peaceful than it would have been if Curley found and killed him.
“But Curley’s gonna want to shoot ‘im. Curley’s Still mad about his hand. An’ s’pose they lock him up an’ strap him down and put him in a cage. That ain’t no good George.” (Page97)
This quote shows that if Curley had caught Lennie he wouldn’t be merciful, helping to justify that George kills him, he didn’t want to take the chance that Lennie could get caught if they just ran away, so he needed to kill him peacefully to ensure he wouldn’t suffer a gruesome death.