Of Mice and Men Blog

The atmosphere in the bunkhouse is tense because George and Lennie are meeting many people they don’t know so the would obviously keep to themselves until they got to know the other people. Also tension has built up with two characters, Curley and his wife. George really doesn’t like these two people and he constantly tells Lennie to keep away from them. George tells Lennie to stay away from Curley; “‘Look Lennie. You keep away from him, will you? Don’t ever speak to him.’” Pg. 29. George tells Lennie to stay away from Curley’s wife; “‘Listen to me, you crazy b******,’ said George fiercely. ‘Don’t you even look at that b****. I don’t care what she says and what she does. I seen ‘em poison before, but I’ve never seen no piece of jail bait worse than her. You leave her be.’” Pg. 32. George doesn’t want Lennie to tangle with Curley, who hates big people because he himself is  small, so he picks fights with them. And George hates Curley’s Wife too for some reason, maybe because she is flirtatious, so innocent Lennie may get caught in her trap.

I think that Curley’s Wife has no name because even though she is his wife, she is still giving other men “the eye”. Or in other words she is flirting. So she has Curley’s name, but she is not truly his wife because she is not faithful to him only. Candy told George that she was flirting with Slim. “‘Well-she got the eye... I seen her give Slim the eye. An’ I seen her give Carlson the eye.’”Pg. 28. Curley’s Wife is already flirting with two other men, and she only got married 2 weeks prior (“‘Married two weeks and got the eye?’” Pg. 28). But that’s not all. She also may have been flirting with George and Lennie when she first met them. This is just speculation based on her attitude and body language. The bottom line is, she is not really interested in Curley. Maybe she married him because of his position as the Boss’ son. So he gets paid more, or maybe for some other reason.

So far in the book, I like it. It sort of reminds me of To Kill a Mockingbird which was a phenomenal book. It is quite interesting, there is a fixed amount of charecters as well, all we need to meet now is Crooks. And although it is a novella, it packs a lot of information. There is good writing on Steinbeck’s part. I’ve heard that the ending is really good as well. Steinbeck does a really good job of setting the scene and immersing the reader into the story. It’s use of realism with the Great Depress and even its language is good. I am looking ward to reading more.