Repeating Apologies

I think it's safe to say that the ending of Of Mice And Men was... unexpected, to say the very least. All in all, though, I think we all saw that this novel would not have a happy ending. As soon as George explained the incident with their last job in Weed, I knew right away it would have some sort of significance in the story.

By the end of the novel, I realized it was foreshadowing. Lennie had a tendency to reach for soft things such as velvet which causes him trouble multiple times, but the incident in Weed is what shows us that Lennie's problems have cost him his job before. The setting of the book begins when George and Lennie start off at a new job, and in my mind I saw it as an omen. The last job went disastrously, and so their new job can only end equally as bad or worse. If the Of Mice And Men had a happy ending, it wouldn't be as well known as it is today. Sad endings, tragedies, and misfortunes throughout a book is what makes it a classic for many years to come. This piece of literature by John Steinbeck is no exception. So while we spend all this time analyzing the ending of the novel, we forget that the tragedy in this literature is what makes it so well known and why people over the decades have taken apart the story piece by piece.