The novel ‘Of Mice and Men’ mirrors, to a certain extent, how hard it was for people to survive during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The book is based on the men who had lived on the ranches- with the addition of one woman.
The first impression of Curley’s wife is not good. When she is introduced into the story, she is a figure who does not fit into the environment of the ranch. “Full rouged lips” is not expected for a lady living on a ranch- this fits more with a city person. She wants to make herself stand out and get the attention of the men on the ranch. This is unusual in the economic climate when everybody was busy trying to keep what money they had. She is dressed from head to toe in red which is a very provocative colour. Red
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She also appears “framed in the doorway” which suggests she is like a picture framed on the wall- more of an object than a person. This is also emphasised by the fact that she hasn’t been given a name, just referred to as ‘Curley’s wife’. This would be normal in the Great Depression as woman were always treated differently to men.
Another point, about Curley’s wife is that the first time we see her, there is a sense of danger towards George and Lennie. “Both men glanced up, for the rectangle of sunshine in the doorway was cut off. A girl was standing there looking in”. The reason why this could be classed as danger towards George and Lennie is because sunshine is a symbol of joy and happiness and she is blocking it which could infer she is producing a sinister image of herself, which is dark. By standing in the doorway she is neither inside nor out, which puts her on her own and not part of the group of men, which gives the impression that she is a very lonely character, which is also emphasised by the fact that she says “I get awful lonely”. This shows that Curley’s wife is always ignored by people as she tries to talk to them. They ignore her because Curley treats her as a possession rather than a human being and they don’t want to cause trouble. However, the loneliness of Curley’s wife is quite
Being Curley’s wife was difficult for her for many reasons. The first one is how she is seen by other men. Curley’s wife is mainly seen as a sexual object that flirts with other men and is unfaithful by looking at men in a way that is frowned upon for married women. They see her as desperate for being noticed and for attention. This quote explains what the men think of her. “I never seen nobody like her. She got the eye goin' all the time on everybody. I bet she even gives the stable buck the eye.” Her appearance comes off as needy and desperate. Another quote demonstrates this as well. Her face grew angry. "Wha's the matter with me?" she cried. "Ain't I got a right to talk to nobody? Whatta they think I am, anyways? You're a nice guy. I don't know why I can't talk to you.” She knows how the see her and is mad because of how they judge her.The second reason is how she wanted her future to be.
Steinbeck's novel 'Of Mice and Men' explores the everyday lives of migrant workers during the Great Depression. In this era, American men were forced to leave their families and become 'drifters'. These were people who didn't have a fixed job and continually moved from place to place.
John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men follows the journey of two men, George Milton and Lennie Small, who struggle through the navigation of working on a ranch in California and fulfilling their dreams together during a time of financial depression. The novel begins with George and Lennie traveling through the California wilderness to get to a new ranch just south of Soledad where they are going to begin new work. They had to leave their previous jobs in a town called Weed because Lennie had caused trouble with a girl by holding on to her red dress because he wanted to feel it, and this incident spiraled into rape allegations against Lennie. As George and Lennie make their way to the new ranch, Lennie; who is a large, but simple minded man; found a dead mouse and wanted to keep it to pet because he likes soft things. George, who is more serious and protects Lennie, takes the mouse away from him because even though it’s dead, he should not be messing with it. Lennie often does not realize his strength because of his mental incapabilities and as a result, he causes a lot of trouble and harm. George finds taking care of Lennie to be taxing, but he knows that their friendship is an important bond that he does not want to be without. In order to comfort Lennie in the wilderness, George tells the story of their shared dream to own their own ranch where they can follow their own rules and live as they please. When they finally arrive at the ranch the next day, George and Lennie
By looking more closely at the story, one can see that Curley’s wife is also a metaphor which symbolizes the way which other people looked upon women in the society of the 1930’s. Curley’s wife represents a whole marginalized group in the American society at that time. In the novel, characters are never fully developed, but instead appear as outlines or symbols of real people. Candy, Crooks, and Curley's wife represent the discriminated groups of age, race, and sex. Curley’s wife has been given an overall picture in the eyes of George and Lennie before they even meet her, by Candy. The picture Candy paints about her hints at how she tends to give all the men on the ranch ‘the eye’. Nobody really knows Curley’s wife because nobody ever talks to her and listens to what she really has to say. Curley’s wife wants attention. She wants people to notice her. She is the only woman on the ranch out of all the men. She wears fancy clothes and nice make up to make her look beautiful and
Curley’s Wife may be misinterpreted by most of the other workers at the same time, as there are times when she seems to snap out of the flirtatious character, and into the vulnerable human being persona. This character is introduced when she is confiding in Lennie about her ambition to be a Movie Star, but these attempts are being blocked by Curley. "Coulda been in the movies, and had nice clothes". This shows she want’s recognition She shows a very vulnerable and human character to us all when she goes as far as to tell Lennie her true feelings about Curley , “a nasty man”. This drives us away from the impression of Curley’s wife that she’s a vixen who sports fancy red shoes. This aspect of Curley’s Wife’s character tells us that she is a victim not of her actions, but of the stereotypical image of women. Also she's unnamed in the novel, possibly to add to her sense of loneliness or to show the insignificant role women played in that time/era in the eyes of males
In 1929, tears swept the nation and gloom bestowed itself upon a once happy place. The Great Depression had started. People lost everything ,so many became migrant workers. Of Mice and Men, a classic novel written by John Steinbeck, emphasizes many sad themes, but gives us a good insight on what life was like in the 1940’s for many people. Although there are other themes, rootlessness, loneliness, and poverty are extremely prominent throughout the novel in many characters.
Curley’s wife, who is never given a name, but always called “Curley’s wife”, is shown with a lot of sexual prejudice. She is referred to as a “looloo” (51) with a very flirtatious nature and “she got the eye goin’ all the time on everybody”, and she might “even gives the stable buck they eye” (51). A "ranch with a bunch of guys on it ain’t no place for a girl, specially like
In the novel Curley’s Wife is portrayed as a source of trouble and danger for the men, not only in how she is described, such as ‘Curley’s married a tart’, but also in how Steinbeck portrays her affect on light and hope. Lennie and George first come across Curley’s wife when ‘the rectangle of sunshine in the door way was cut off. A girl was standing there looking in’. She is blocking one of the only light sources into the bunkhouse, which indicates that she is an obstacle on the path to realising hopes and dreams, for Lennie, George and the other men. George is wary of Curley’s Wife and so he warns Lennie ‘ Well you keep away from her, ‘cause she’s a rat trap ’. He suspects that someday she will cause Lennie to get into trouble, thus making it harder to reach their dreams. In the barn towards the end of the novel when Lennie kills Curley’s Wife, ‘ the sun streaks were high on the wall...and the light was growing soft ’. In this situation the light represents her hopes and dreams
During the Great Depression, families lost everything as banks crashed and dust swirled over the barren landscape of the Midwest. Parents left their homes and bundled their children and worldly possessions into their cars and headed west to the land of hope in California. In this time, it is difficult to think of groups bonding together, especially as workers compete for limited agricultural jobs on ranches. However, while John Steinbeck’s characters in the novella Of Mice and Men isolate themselves in some ways from the world, they are also interconnected in webs of community throughout their ranch. Curley’s wife, Crooks, George Milton, and Lennie Small are all
The Great Depression affected many Americans throughout the 1930s. Many people had no source of income and had no other choice but to travel and find new jobs. In John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, George Milton and Lennie Small wander through California in search of a new job that would help them make enough money to live their American dream on “the fatta the lan’”(Steinbeck 14). George and Lennie’s hard work and determination is not enough for them to live their dream. Lennie has a mental disability that slows the two friends down from living their dream; they have to run from job to job because of Lennie’s unintentional actions.
John Steinbeck presents Curley’s wife at the start of the story as an irrelevant character because she has no relation with George and Lennie. At the start, Curley is one of the most important characters (besides George and Lennie) because he has the power to crush George and Lennie’s dream of having a farm of your own. But as the story goes on, to end, we see the importance of her character and that everything that has happened on the ranch is caused by her presence; even though she is not in the story as much as others, she has a long lasting effect on the other characters. She is mentioned in the story a lot because of how she would acted around the men working in the ranch. In the end, we knew Lennie and George were not going to get a
Some may think it is just sexism at its finest that determines the books way of calling Curley’s wife as Curley’s and nameless from there on out, but that is not the only resort to the name calling. Curley’s wife is not happy with Curley, maybe the relationship started off good at first but Mrs.Curley realizes that her marrying Curley was really just isolating herself from the rest of the word and gave her no say in her own life. "Awright, cover 'im up if ya wanta. Whatta I care? You bindle bums think you're so damn good. Whatta ya think I am, a kid? I tell ya I could of went with shows. Not jus' one, neither. An' a guy tol' me he could put me in pitchers…" (102) Curley’s wife seems to never be fully heard by anyone in the ranch on what she wants in her life or her opinions on others. This caused her prejudice because even to George and Lennie Mrs.Curley was just “Curley’s wife” and still had no say or opinion in what she was talking about. This later cost her her own life when Lennie fails to listen to her cries when he accidentally choked her to
The Dust Bowl and the Great Depression come quickly to mind when reflecting on the 1930s, a well-remembered and hardship-filled decade in American history. The fictional novel Of Mice and Men provides a detailed flashback to what was happening in this era and exposes the many challenges and prejudices of the day. John Steinbeck uses stereotypes to illustrate how difficult life really was in the thirties for the discriminated: women seen as less than men, African-Americans still being discriminated against 60 years after the end of the civil war, people with mental disabilities thought to be inferior and easily manipulated, and the elderly perceived as useless and decrepit. The characters in Steinbeck’s novel can be viewed as individual characters,
One of the themes of this novel is dreams, while many men on the ranch dreamt of the American dream of owning their own ranch, Curley’s wife had a different dream, she dreamed of becoming an actress. “coulda been in the movies, an’ had pictures taken of me. Because the guy says I was a natural.” I understand now why Curley’s wife was searching for attention from the other characters. I guess she feels as if she could have become a famous actress and is subsatuting that feeling by making herself known amongst the men. She craves that attention she could have potentially received. Curley’s wife is very misunderstood by the other characters and since no one gives her the time of day she’s badly perceived.
‘Of mice and men’ is a tale of loneliness and hardship felt by the people living in America during the 1930 's. Written by John Steinbeck and published in 1937, it tells the heartbreaking story of two ranch workers during the depression; George Milton and Lennie Small. At the time America was very poor, with a shortage of jobs so people had to travel in search of new jobs. As many people were constantly moving, lasting friendships or relationships were hard to come across. People became scared to have friendships, scared of each other making them lonely and isolated. Most of the characters lived by ‘every man for himself’; only having to care for themselves, not having to worry about others and therefore