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Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
John Steinbeck’s novella Of Mice and Men follows two migrant farmers and their experiences working towards their dream. The story takes place in the Salinas Valley during both the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, when jobs were few and far between. George and Lennie have a dream of owning land, which is inhibited by these conditions. On the farm they come to work on, they meet the sultry wife of the Curly, the boss’ son. She was deprived of achieving her dream or stardom, and is left constantly craving attention in any way she can get it.
John Steinbeck’s presents Curley’s wife in a way that comes off as she is being abused. In Of Men and Mice Steinbeck clearly portrays Curley’s wife as a victim and not a villain, as others would see her. She is abused by Curley, mistreated by the other men on the ranch, and she is treated like she does not exist with no respect or value. Curley’s wife is a victim because Curley her husband, abuses and mistreats her.
Curley’s Wife is depicted as morally ambiguous because she uses her sexual appeal to lure men into her life, but in her point of view, she is trying to repel her loneliness. Curley’s Wife likes to use her physical appeal to get to know other men. To make her husband jealous, she is very seductive towards her husband's workers. This is
In the book Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Curley’s wife is portrayed many different ways throughout the story. Women were often understated around guys, and given less power. When Curley’s wife is first introduced, she doesn’t come off to the readers as very nice. When she was introduced she was mean, flirtatious, and it was let known that she was beautiful. She was flirting with the other men on the ranch,you feel more bad for her when the men are saying mean things about her, and near the end of the book the reader becomes sympathetic for her.
The first way Steinbeck shows that Curley’s wife is a victim is by showing her dislike for Curley. In the novel, a lot of information was given when Curley’s wife was speaking to Lennie. Steinbeck states, “Well, I ain’t told nobody this before. Maybe I ought’n to. I don’ like Curley.
”(Steinbeck 88). Curley’s wife unwittingly sets up Lennie to change the entire course of the book and further complicate the situation for them. Lennie ends up killing Curley’s wife in a situation she never should have been in, but her nosy behavior brings her to her doom. If Curley and his wife could produce a real conversation maybe everyone could have gotten their dream to come true but somethings just do not pan out. Curley’s wife can be vicious in about any way just like she is to the other
How would it feel to always be considered the villain? Would it be worth to try and convince them that what they say is false? Or continue life knowing the actual truth? In John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, one of the characters in the book, Curley’s wife, was often treated as if she was below the ranchers and that she did not deserve their respect. The way she addresses herself is often confused for being flirtatious and/or seductive, when in point of fact, she is just lonely and in need of someone to talk to.
When Curley’s wife is talking to Lennie, she initially judges him and claims, “I think you’re nuts” based off of the way he sounds and the things he talks about (Steinbeck 98). Curley’s wife misjudges Lennie because he talks and sounds different than her, so her initial judgment is that he is nuts. She uses a stereotypical reference to implicate the idea that he is a crazy person. However, after talking to him for a while now she realizes that he is “kinda a nice fella” and came to accept him (Steinbeck 99). Once she really got to talk to Lennie and really understand who he is, she could make the right judgment about him.
Curley’s wife also states, as she targets Crooks, “Well, you keep your place then, nigger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain’t even funny” (81). Curley's wife feel she needs to prove her own authority as Curley’s wife by picking on social outcasts, because she knows she has no power over anyone else on the entire ranch and she is tired of feel empowered all the time. She uses her beauty to give her power over the men, and her position as a white person and the boss’ son’s wife to pick on a social outcast, such as a black person like
This showed that even though she doesn’t have any power she still has power over African Americans. She can even threaten to have Crooks killed because he talked to her. After she said that “crooks seemed to grow smaller, and he pressed himself against the wall. ‘yes, ma’am’” (80). This shows that the words Curley’s wife has a terrible effect on Crooks.
As a result of being the wife of the boss’s son, Curley’s wife has nobody to talk to which leads to her isolation. Due to Lennie’s fascination towards Curley’s wife, George commands, “don’t you even take a look at that bitch. I don’t care what she says and what she does. I see ‘em poison before, but I never seen no piece of jailbait worse than her. You leave her be” (32).
Curley’s wife has many unrealized dreams. Before her death, Curley’s wife confesses her desire to become a movie star, “Coulda been in the movies, an’ had nice clothes-all them nice clothes like they wear... An’ all them nice clothes like they wear. Because this guy says I was a natural.” p.89
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is a book about how racism is so ingrained into the way people think,act, how ingrained it is into our laws and government, and how society has villainized African americans. You can see this throughout time, it doesn't just stop in the 1930s, and TKAM brings a lot of this to light. The theme of the novel is to show how prejudice has been ingrained into society and the things that need to be done to get rid of this prejudice. There are many examples of prejudice throughout the books, but segregation is definitely a theme that is prevalent. discrimination that is so rooted in society, and the social difference between the two races in the 1930s.
The characters in Of Mice and Men all have original and unique characteristics inside of them, but no matter how different, they all have the same reactions of giving up when thinking about dreams. The main characters George and Lennie, recently unemployed migrant workers, move to a new ranch for work. Thrown into a cruel, misshapen life that doesn’t end well for the majority of characters, George and Lennie find themselves in a dilemma that seems all too familiar. John Steinbeck uses the characters in Of Mice and Men to show that dreams are fragile and they need friends to support them.
Aforementioned, Curley 's wife represents discrimination towards women, she is constantly looked down upon and isn 't treated with respect. However, when she is talking to Crooks, “‘Well, you keep your place then, n*****. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain 't even funny,’”(OMAM 81). Crooks and Curley 's wife go through something similar. They are both discriminated based on a difference that the other men on the farm don’t have.