Like Candy, Candy’s dog is faced with the ultimate punishment for his age and disability. Candy’s dog is old and said to smell bad and isn’t worth anything, the dog is shot because of its disabilities. This event foreshadows Lennie’s fate at the hand of George. Both of these characters’ euthanasia is rationalized to put them out of their misery and to prevent future suffering from happening due to their disabilities. Which is almost a mirror image of George and Lennie’s relationship where George has known Lennie for a considerable amount of time and George knows that he is completely responsible of Lennie’s well-being and when that well-being is in jeopardy George feels a moral obligation just like Candy did when he gave permission to Carlson to shoot his dog. The euthanizing of Candy’s dog is a “foreshadowing of what will happen with Lennie and George” (Thomas Scarseth) because both Candy and George’s relationship to those dependent to them end with them killing them in order to save them from suffering.
Through the narrative convention of foreshadowing, Steinbeck uses the execution of Candy’s dog to predict what will occur to Candy himself, once his ability to work diminishes completely. Candy’s dog is a metaphor of himself. The dog represents the brutality of life on the land and the inevitability of becoming useless.
In John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, George and Lennie arrive on a ranch where they are told to work. Through experiences with the other ranch hands, many things do not go as expected. This shows the theme of being able to handle plans going awry. Though these issues are not always detrimental or fatal, they were for both Lennie and his acquaintances. In both my personal experience of everything going wrong in a play, and Lennie’s mistakes in Of Mice and Men, the theme of being able to handle a plan going awry stays true throughout.
In the novella Of Mice and Men both Lennie and Candy’s dog dies. The dog was killed by Carlson with a bullet in the back of his head with Carlson’s Luger pistol. Carlson convinced Candy to kill him because the dog was useless to itself and he wouldn’t hurt it while killing it as he said on page 72, “The way I’d shoot him, he wouldn’t feel nothing.” Lennie was killed by George by the Salinas River. George killed Lennie because Curly was going to kill Lennie for killing his wife and I guess thought he should do it. Both Candy’s dog and Lennie was killed by a shot
The killing of Candy's dog was related to when George killed Lennie in several ways. First of all, both the dog and Lennie were weak, and killed as soon as they became useless to the society. Also, the dog was Candy's friend, and Lennie was George's friend. In both cases, Slim viewed the deaths as mercy killings. The last similarity was that both Candy and George felt lonely after the death of their companions. The difference was that Carlson killed the dog for selfish reasons, while George killed Lennie out of mercy. This was how the killing of the dog relates to the killing of Lennie.
As George found out about the puppy and Curley’s Wife he immediately ran down to the river. Once he got there he was talking to Lennie and knew he was going to have to shoot him. As he was getting ready to shoot Lennie he pointed it to the back of his head and did it. Lennie’s death is the same as Candy’s dog’s death.
It “was silent outside. Carlson’s footsteps died away. The silence came into the room. The silence lasted” (Steinbeck 48). The use of the repetition of silence and an abundance of short choppy sentences to slow down the pace of the story. This emphasizes the awkwardness of the silence and the loneliness that Candy feels. Candy raised his dog from a pup and had herded sheep with him. His dog was essentially the last companion he truly had. When Carlson puts the dog down, he essentially puts down Candy’s whole demeanor in this moment, as Candy now has no one. In the same way Steinbeck uses narrative pacing in the instance with Candy’s dog, he also uses it when George has to put down Lennie. When Lennie is on the run from Curley, he clumsily returns to the spot where George had told him to head to in case he got in trouble. When George found him at the creek, he talked and talked with Lennie, until, finally, he, “raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it close to the back of Lennie’s head. The hand shook violently, but his face set and his hand steadied. He pulled the trigger” (Steinbeck 106). Steinbeck slows down the pace
In the book, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, there are many human and animal deaths all throughout the book. The most significant death was when George went against his will and killed Lennie. Lennie’s death was unjustified since he was never given any opportunity to make up for it or to just run and get away. After Lennie killed Curley’s wife no one could trust him and with that the workers on the ranch believed it was Lennie’s “turn” to die. Over the course of human history there have been many unjustified deaths leading to no charge against the assailants. Such as, death row, self-defense and euthanasia, these types of deaths are all unjustified and there are many reasons to authenticate it.
“It's not a choice between life and death. It's a choice between different ways of dying” (Preiss). Of Mice and Men, winner novel of the nobel prize in Literature, by John Steinbeck, one of the main characters, George was facing the same problem as Candy whose dog got put down by one of the workers, a stranger. Lennie, the other main character in the novel is getting hunted down by Curley because Lennie didn't know his own strength and accidentally murdered his wife. George made the decision, with Candy and his dog situation in mind, instead of Lennie dying with miserable death, George would put him down with a different and a peaceful way of dying. Of Mice and Men resolves that killing, is a moral option, and should be the person’s own decision.
Lennie and Candy’s dog are parallel. Candy’s dog is old, stinky, it cant take care of itself and he’s useless. Lennie cant take care of himself of others, and when he gets scared he holds on to whatever hes got. Candy’s dog had to be put down, just like Lennie. They were also killed the same way. “If you want me to, I’ll put the old devil out of his misery right now and get it over with. Ain’t nothing left for him. Can’t eat, can’t see, can’t even walk without hurtin’” (48). In this scene Carlson took Candy’s dog out and shot him. Though Candy did not want his dog to be dead, he still went through with it. This is just like when George went to kill Lennie, he didn’t want too but it had to be
This dog was candy’s life but he was also a miserable. After a little bit of convincing candy gave in because he care about the dog. He choose not to shot the dog himself, but later regrets that because he wanted the killing under his control. Later on in the book George realizes that Lennie was out of control, with his desire of soft thing.
The taken lives of animals is overlooked but the loss of any one human is important thus for the death of curley’s wife will be avenged. Lennie is being hunted by the spouse of the dead. If anyone is to find him curley wants to be told so he can personally take care of the matter of justice. George knows where lennie is so he ran to find him before anyone else so he could see him again. When george gets there he finds lennie and lennie starts saying that it was an accident and it was not his fault. So george calms lennie down by telling him stories of the farm. Then george shoots lennie in the head to peacefully take him out of a world he doesn’t belong in. steinbeck used foreshadowing in the shooting of candy’s dog because he isn’t good for
Steinbeck foreshadows the death of Lennie many ways throughout the novel. Lennie has a tendency to mess up. For example, George said in the beginning of the novel if he ever got in trouble to go by the brush and wait for him to arrive. When Lennie killed the pup and Curley's wife he went to the brush and waited for George. Lennie also had trouble with pets or feeling soft things. For example, he killed the mice he always held or played with. This foreshadows that Lennie has the strength and ability to kill someone or something without trying or wanting to. When Candy's dog was was old and suffering, Carlson grabbed his Luger and shot the dog in the back of the head. This foreshadows that someone is going to die. For example, George grabbed
The only character who really cares for Candy’s dog is Candy himself. He is the only one opposed to the dog being put down because he has become attached to it; Candy has spent a lifetime with his dog and the thought of putting him down is too much for him. Candy wants to keep the dog alive for his own
Death in literature is a hit or a miss. It can either be a powerful tool to completely ramp up (or down) the plot, or it can be a horribly cliche and lackluster scene that drives away interest. John Steinbeck is one of the authors who has shown himself to be a competent author when it comes to this topic, and his two novellas The Pearl and Of Mice and Men demonstrate his usage of it to the fullest.