George Milton kills his friend Lennie Small in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. This act of violence is an example of authorial violence, which is used by authors to advance the plot, rather than being character-generated. There are two types of violence in literature - narrative violence, which generally harms characters through actions like stabbing and shooting, and authorial violence, which is motivated by the author to move the plot forward, such as ending complications created by Lennie's mental retardation.