Of
Mice and Men
For a moment Lennie seemed bewildered. And then he whispered in fright”,
“I done a bad thing. I done another bad thing”.
He pawed up the hay until it partly covered her. He stood back up again and stared down at the dead body.
“George won’t ever let me tend the rabbits anymore,” he thought.
Then, Lennie remembered George telling him to go down to the brush
where they stayed before going to the ranch. So Lennie without decision
and determination started running as fast as he could away from the
barn, away from the ranch and away from danger.
Meanwhile, whilst the other men were playing
horseshoe, Candy went into the barn in search of Lennie, but when he
got to the barn he found Curley’s wife lying in a haystack and
Lennie’s hat next to her. Suddenly silence fell in the barn.
Candy knew that Lennie had been the one who had killed her and he also
knew that if he told it would mean the end of their dream. Candy
thought and thought for a way out of all this. Then something came to
his mind; he didn’t care if he couldn’t follow his dream
but he did care that George and Lennie followed their dreams. So Candy
very bravely went out and called George. There was no response. He
tried again, “George, hey George I gotta talk to you.
It’s important!” There was still no response from him.
Candy started getting a bit angry, yet he did not give up.
“George! Would ya please quit playing and come here!”
Finally George responded but in a very frustrated way, “What the
hell do you want now?”
At that point, extreme anger built up in Candy, “You wanna know
what happened? Your stupid friend killed the wife of the son’s
boss, that’s what happened!”
At that response all the men on the ranch turned towards Candy. That
was when Candy realized he had made the biggest mistake of his whole
life, but it was too late to go back now. They all started screaming,
“Where is that giant bloke? Where is he? Where is he? I’m gonna get him!”
Now George regretted not responding to Candy
in the first place, but he had no time to blame himself. He knew what
he had to do and he was going to do it. He took hold of a really sharp
knife from the kitchen and started running and running as fast as he
could. During that time the others, including Candy, were getting on
their horses and galloping along the countryside in search for Lennie.
George continued running as fast as he could because he could not
permit the others to find Lennie before him otherwise he feared that
they would torture him to death.
Shortly after, George arrived in the brush
where Lennie had been told to meet him in case of situations like this.
He looked around and saw Lennie hiding underneath some thick
vegetation. George said,
“Lennie… Hey Lennie are you there?”
Lennie responded with a trembling and frightened voice,
“Yes George I’m here . . . I did what you told me to do George, I remembered George, I remembered.”
“Yes Lennie, you remembered and I am proud of you”, George said.
There was a moment of silence and then Lennie said,
“George, I really didn’t mean to kill her George, I really didn’t mean to. I’m sorry George!”
Then suddenly all the men arrived on their big
horses. Each man had a gun ready to kill Lennie as soon as he
came out of his hiding place. George showed his weapon to the others so
that they would think that even he was prepared to kill him. Candy
looked at what was happening, and he felt responsible for all of it, so
he said,
“I killed her.”
The men turned towards him with a surprised
expression on their face. Candy continued, “ Yeah I killed
Curley’s wife because she was such a trouble maker but I blamed
Lennie because he is easy to convice, ya know how he doesn’t have
a very extended mind so I told him that he had to run away otherwise
you would have killed him. He looked a bit confused because he
didn’t know why you had to kill him but to be on the safe side he
runaway…so if ya gotta kill someone kill me.”
George knew that what Candy had said was not true and that he
sacrificed himself to save George, Lennie and their dream. George threw
a thankful expression to Candy, and Candy responded with a look on his
face, meaning, “No problem… I had to.”
Without any hesitation, Curley took his gun and pointed it at Candy.
There was a moment of suspense. Then the sound of an explosion
filled the atmosphere. George thought in his mind, “ Just
like his dog…”.
Claire 8C
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