How Does Violence Cause Conflict In Of Mice And Men

In John Steinbeck's novel, Of Mice and Men, the characters seemed to think violence would solve their problems. Though there is a reason that both contributors get hurt in a fight, violence doesn't solve conflicts. In some of the conflicts no one was even suppose to get hurt, they were accidents. Although, many of the situations in the book resolved in major consequences, such as physical and even emotional issues. In the novel violence didn't solve any of their problems. In almost every fight that has ever taken place both people involved end up getting hurt, this is one of those times. In this scene Curley, the antagonist, is starting to get mad about Lennie laughing because he thinks he is laughing at him. Curley then starts yelling at him to fight and he attacks Lennie. "Curley's rage exploded. 'Come on, ya big bastard. Get up on your feet. No big son-of-a-bitch is gonna laugh at me. I'll show ya who's yella.'"(pg. 62) As Curley is punching Lennie, George tells him to fight back and after a few more words of encouragement he does. Lennie being stronger than Curley easily overpowered him and took hold of his hand. Lennie crushed …show more content…
If anything more problems arose for them the more they used violence against each other. Curley having his whole hand crushed by Lennie didn't fix their argument about his wife, it only gave Curley more of a reason to hate Lennie. In fact this is probably on if the reasons he jumped to the conclusion that Lennie killed his wife. Also killing Curley's wife did nothing to help keep her quiet so he wouldn't get in trouble, it got him in even more trouble. Finally, when George made the decision to kill Lennie it gave him a lot of grief to actually follow threw with it and killing him didn't help Lennie at all either since now he is dead. Though many of the characters choose violence as their path to fix their problems it really didn't help any of