Quote Detail

After the boss leaves, Lennie sincerely asks whether the horse story was true, and George admits the lie. His vehemence here closes the brief exchange.

The conditional 'If I was a relative of yours I'd shoot myself' deploys hyperbolic violence as the period's standard idiom of male affection-through-insult, but the verb 'shoot' acquires terrible literal resonance given the novel's ending. Steinbeck plants the syntax of mercy killing in a throwaway joke, so that on rereading the line operates as dramatic irony of the most economical kind: the implement is named long before the act.

Support a thesis that Steinbeck distributes the vocabulary of the novel's final act across early scenes as casual idiom—this offhand 'shoot myself' is one of several verbal seedings (Carlson's later remarks about Candy's dog included) that make the closing gunshot feel inevitable rather than imposed.