Hey guys I've finished reading 'Of mice and men' by 'John Stienbeck' in english. I had to do an analysis on a character of my choice, I chose Curley's wife. I made this rough draft of it, can you guys tell me if its good and give points? As we progress through the story, we learn about her past and how she feels. Our feelings change immensely towards her. From the start, we are lead to believe she is a tramp and mean. We learn how Curley's wife looks through Steinbeck's descriptive language and how he uses her looks to show what her personality is like. Steinbeck told us about her “Full rouged lips and wide-spaced eyes” and her being “heavily made up” suggesting she's very flirtatious or wanting attention, it also suggests that she is an insecure person. She also dresses and paints her nails and styles her hair quite different from everyone on the ranch which would draw even more attention to her. Her dress is made from red ostrich feathers, and red is a sign of danger, which Steinbeck infers to the other male characters to stay away from her. When we first see her, she is standing in the doorway blocking the sunlight from the men in the bunk house, possibly to draw attention to herself. When she talks to George she talks to him 'playfully', but when George said “If I see him I'll pass the word you was looking for him.”, her body twitched which tells us she might have just used 'looking for Curley' as an excuse to talk to the men. When she goes George says that she's a tramp but Lennie defends her by saying, “She's purty,” and looks at the door frame admiringly where she just was, however George tells Lennie “Don't you even take a look at that bitch. I don't care what she says and what she does. I seen 'em poison before, but I never seen no jail-bait worse than her.” which tells us George thinks Lennie will try something with her and lose them their jobs or thinks Lennie will do the same thing to her as the girl in Weed. The second time we see her she was heavily made-up again. This time she was out of breath, maybe she was running from Curley. She says “funny thing... If I catch any one man, an' he's alone, I get along fine with him. But just let two of the guys get together an' you won't talk.” She's telling us that all the men are scared to talk to her when the others are there because she might find out something about them to use against them. This shows how they didn't trust people in that period when jobs were scarce. When Crooks says that she should go and that they don't want any trouble she says that she isn't doing any harm and that she needs someone to talk to every once in a while. She doesn't even like Curley, she says “Sure I gotta husban'. You all seen him. Swell guy ain't he?” sarcasticly. She then asks the men what happened to his hand, All the men told her his hand got caught in a machine. She didn't believe them and said “You bindle bums think you're so damn good. Whatta ya think I am, a kid? I tell ya I could have went to shows.... an a guy tol' me he'd put me in the pitchers.”, revealing some of her dream to be an actress. This might explain why she stands out from the rest. She goes on to say that she's talking to bindle stiffs and liking it because she has no one else to talk to. She made Candy angry and he told her that she wasn't wanted and they wouldn't care if they got 'canned' because they had a place to go. He told her about George and Lennie's (now Candy's) dream. She tells Crooks that she could get him lynched if he said anything about her. Candy says that she has practise for sneaking around implying she is always hiding from Curley. This shows us how important she thinks she is, but throughout the novel no one cares about her, even when she dies. This is also the first time we find out that she can be mean if she wanted to. The next time we see her is when Lennie is in the barn and he killed the pup. When she sees him doing something, Lennie panics and covers the dog. Curley's wife asks “What you got there, sonny boy?” but Lennie only stares at her and replies “George says I ain't to have nothing to do with you”. She knows immediately why he isn't allowed to talk to her, because George thinks they will get 'canned'. Lennie tries to avoid through talking to Lennie we learn of her feelings about being lonely as she never talks to anybody except Curley. She sees that Lennie wont talk to her so she changes the subject. She asks what he covered up. Although we learn that she isn't bad, she just says “Don't you worry none. He was jus' a mutt. You can get another one easy.” and when she hears that Lennie is sad, she tries to make him feel better as she talks to him 'soothingly' and tells him that it's okay to talk to her. But when Lennie told her that George would get angry with him for talking to her, she got angry saying that she isn't doing any harm by talking. She then tells us her story, about her wanting to be an actress and also revealing to us that she only married Curley to get away or, get back, at her mum for not letting her be an actress. She then lets Lennie stroke her hair as she thinks it's soft and she just learned that he liked touching soft things. Lennie didn't like her moving so much and he then put his hand over her mouth and snapped her neck, by accident. When Curley's wife dies she is described as being pure, beautiful and all the meanness going from her face. It describes a pigeon flew in to the barn and went back out, as did the silence, it stayed but then it was broken, telling us that life went on. Throughout the book we feel sorry for Curley's wife. Every character in the book talks about her being as a woman who is a tramp, but we know the real reason is that she is lonely and wants some company and asks where Curley is to start a conversation. We know that her dreams had been crushed of being a star but because of this she dresses like a star instead which makes her come across as 'flirty'. We realise that she uses her looks to get attention from people because her husband doesn't show her any affection or attention. Even when she died, Curley only cared about killing Lennie and didn't cry or stay with her. She is also referred to as Curley's wife and has no personality of her own. Telling us what life was like for women at the time. That women were not that important and that Curley just saw her as an object. Although she is portrayed as mean and a 'tramp', we feel sorry for her. Maybe it's because she doesn't get anything she wants, she was lonely when she was alive and when she died, she didn't get to be in 'pitchers'. And even in death, she is still lonely as Curley doesn't stay with her. Candy is made to stay and all he does is call her a 'tramp' and blame her for his dream not coming true, his last words about her were “poor bastard”. You could say she is naïve as she thought her mother hid letters from her to make sure she didn't become an actress. She is like Lennie in a way, however, she is not stupid like Lennie, she is blissfully unaware of how bad it is for the others on the ranch. She relates to Lennie at the end of the novel. From the way she talks, we are lead to think that she's unintelligent. She says short, simple words like “Ain't”, “fella” and “jus'”. She uses these words quite frequently which may lead us to believe that her vocabulary isn't very wide. She often uses derogatory terms such as “Nigger” and “bindle bums”. I think her role in the novel is to symbolize how women were treated back in those days and how life can be taken for no reason. She may also be used to show how dreams are broken, a recurrent theme in this novel. Ps. I know this is manga and stuff part but ya know
