Summaries of the last two chapters from Of Mice and Men:

Chapter 5:

Lennie is sitting in the barn stroking his dead puppy angry that it died even though it was his fault, because he crushed it just like the mice. Curley’s wife enters and Lennie hides the puppy from her. He tells her how George doesn’t want him to even look at her much less talk to her. She says it is okay to talk to her and comforts him by sympathizing over his dead puppy. She then again turns to her talks about how lonely she is, and how mean her mother was to her when she was younger. She also tells him about how she dislikes Curley even though she married him. She asks Lennie why he likes animals so much and he tells her that he likes to stroke them because they are soft. She lets him stroke her hair but when he is too rough she tries to pull away and screams. Lennie tries to quiet her by clamping his hands over her mouth and in the struggle he ends up breaking her neck. He tries to hide her body in the barn in panic but is unsuccessful, so he runs off to the meeting place where George told him to hide if he got in any trouble. Candy finds the body in the barn and tells George, both the men realize what has happened. George goes off to find Lennie (but not before taking Carlson’s gun) and Candy goes to warn the rest of the ranch.

Chapter 6:

George realizes where Lennie has gone and gets there before the search party, who wants to catch then lynch Lennie. George knows that if they catch Lennie they will first torment him and berate him before finally killing him. Because of this George knows what he must do in order to spare Lennie all that pain. Lennie asks George to tell him the story of the farm and the rabbits again, so George agrees but tells Lennie to remove his hat and face away from him. In the middle of George’s description of the farm he hears the search party getting closer so he pulls Carlson’s gun out of his jacket and shoots Lennie in the back of the head. The shot grabs the attention of the men and they come running to the river where they see Lennie lying on the ground and George standing over him. He tells them that he wrestled the gun from Lennie and shot him. Only Slim understands what George has done and tells hi that he had to and it was for the best.