I was slightly disappointed with the ending but that does not mean the ending was not good or should have been better. I just thought that even though I would have liked to read something realistic and not a fairytale ending, George’s killing was not called for. Of course had he killed Lenny earlier we would not have had a story or the story line would have been different in the book. He could have betrayed Lenny to Curley instead of punishing his friend this way but perhaps this was one sure way that he would be able to exonerate himself from having been in on the Lenny’s killing of every woman he shakes.

The ending did provide some insight that friendships are seldom permanent and that sometimes we are faced with issues that friends present us, causing us to lose any feeling towards them. One wonders why on earth George did hang around with Lenny then and not carry out his wish of going on his own direction rather than have to resort to killing Lenny. He could have been more accommodating and allowed Lenny his right to go off on his own.

Then again it was the author’s intention to have us see how friendship is as antagonistic as it is binding. The antagonism comes through when George talks to Lenny at a different level and gets irritated when Lenny uses repeated phrases and is fixed on certain “childish” thoughts.

I suppose the ending offers the reader a twist from the ongoing theme that George is Lenny’s permanent keeper and protector. There had to be a conclusion to the conflict that George had within himself about whether he would stay with his buddy or not. This conflict was often externalized in Lenny’s dialogue to himself or to story characters that he knew he had to react to differently and assertively to appeal to George’s approval. But George often disapproved of hi friend’s conduct.

So perhaps this was why Steinbeck chose an assassination scene rather than have Lenny get killed by the husband of the woman he had murdered.