How Is Slim Portrayed In Of Mice And Men

In John Steinbeck’s novel, Of Mice and Men, Curley being portrayed as the“bad guy” and Slim as the “good guy”. As Curley and Slim interact with other characters in the novel, their good and evil traits impact not only the other characters but the reader as well. Slim makes Curley’s wife feel exceptionally well while Curley makes her feel awful. George and Slim become friends while George and Curley become enemies. Slim understands Lennie where as Curley fails to. Throughout the story Slim affects people positively and Curley affects them negatively. The first person Slim positively impacts and that Curley puts down is Curley’s Wife. Slim treats her courteous, friendly, and flirts with her a little, making her feel valuable. Curley is always yelling at his wife which puts her down and makes her heartbroken. He also makes his wife more lonely by isolating her. This is shown when Curley’s Wife says to Lennie, “I get lonely. You can talk to people, but I can't talk to nobody but Curley. Else he gets mad. How'd you like not to talk to anybody?” (Steinbeck 87). On the other hand Slim makes her not so lonely and he gives her a sense of security. A perfect example of this situation, when

The first satisfying phenomenon that Slim executes for Lennie is he provides him with a puppy. With this puppy comes comfort for Lennie and it gives him something that he can call his own. The first thing Curley does atrocious to Lennie is intimidate him. This makes Lennie scared and not as trustworthy of people. Also, Slim understands Lennie, unlike the rest of the ranch hands. An example of this is when Slim says, “Guy don’t need no sense to be a nice fella. Seems sometimes it jus’ works the other way around”(Steinbeck 40). This is important because most of the people on the ranch understand Lennie and hesitate to provide him with compassion due to his lack of