And George 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.
Chapter 6 · Narrator
Context
As the search party's voices come close, George brings the muzzle of the gun to the back of Lennie's head and shoots him.
Analysis
The two clauses 'his face set and his hand steadied' constitute a syntactic reversal of the earlier 'his hand shook'—Steinbeck uses parallel sentence architecture to mark the precise moment resolve overtakes hesitation, without entering George's mind to explain why. The polysyndetic chain ('And George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought…') produces a biblical-paratactic rhythm whose ritual cadence aligns the killing with sacrifice rather than murder, and the spondaic finality of 'He pulled the trigger'—three monosyllables, no qualifier—refuses any rhetorical elevation.
How to Use in Essay
Support a thesis that Steinbeck deploys biblical paratactic syntax to frame Lennie's death as ritual sacrifice rather than secular violence—the polysyndetic rhythm 'and...and...and' invokes a register that places the killing in the lineage of Abraham at Moriah, though here without divine intervention.