To A Mouse Essay

847 Words2 Pages

From the poem To A Mouse by Robert Burns, John Steinbeck names his book Of Mice and Men. The poem To a Mouse is about a man who while plowing his field, comes across a mouse that he has accidentally slain. The mouse was in a little home that it has built to stay warm for the upcoming winter. Similarly, the man was plowing his field getting ready for the winter months. After all, both the mouse and the man were both doing their normal duties as mouse and farmer. However, the man, when he comes across the dead mouse is very shaken and upset that this event has occurred. In the same way, in the book Of Mice and Men when George must kill Lennie, George is similarly shaken and upset that this event had to have occurred. Both events were unplanned and not called for. Therefore, the title of this book is appropriate for the characters and events because life is never the way one plans it and things will happen that are uncalled for and unplanned. In the book, the example of an unplanned event is when George has to kill Lennie for accidentally killing Curely's wife. Lennie one day was in the barn petting an already dead puppy. Lennie received the puppy because he liked petting soft things "Lennie looked at it for a long time, and then he put out his huge hand and stroked it, stroked it clear from one end to the other." (85) He accidentally killed the puppy my petting it too hard. Lennie was slow and did not understand things fully. Since he wanted to tend to the rabbits when he and George have their own farm, he was worried that if George found the puppy dead, George would not let him tend to the rabbits anymore, "Now George ain't gonna let me tend to no rabbits, if he fin's out you got killed." (85) Just then, Curely's w... ... middle of paper ... ...nning for the future, life often goes awry and leaves one with nothing but grief and pain. Identically, when George kills Lennie, even through the planning of Lennie not talking to Curley's wife and having their own farm, life went off the tracks when Lennie kills Curley's wife and George is left with pain and grief when he is left to kill Lennie and be alone. The reader can see how in the poem, the farmer was not aware that this would be a day where he would kill a mouse and destroy it's home and by the same token, George was not aware that he would have to kill Lennie in order to save him from his own fate. In conclusion, this title is appropriate for the characters and events of this novel because the poem emphasizes the concept of life throwing curve balls and no matter how well one plans the future, one can never have a foresight as to what will happen.

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