Of Mice and Men Important Character

Describe a character or individual in of mice and men of whom you found interesting. Explain how the writing made the character interesting to you.

Of Mice and Men written by John Steinbeck tells the tragic story about George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers during the Great Depression in California. An interesting character in this book that Lennie and George meet is ‘Curleys Wife’, a young pretty women who is mistrusted by her husband Curley, the son of the boss of the ranch. The other characters refer to her only as “Curleys Wife”, making her the only significant character in the novel without a name. This lack of personal definition underscores this characters purpose in the book, to be a symbol of how women were treated in the 1930’s – 1940’s.

Curley’s wife is a very interesting character to the reader because in the novel of Mice and Men she is very complex and different from any other character because she is perceived in so many different ways. The men on the ranch think she’s a floozy because she’s always after there attention. She does this by giving them the eye, even though she’s only been married to Curley for 2 weeks, “I seen her give slim the eye. Curley never seen it. An’ I seen her give Carlson the eye” Another reason why the men think she’s a floozy is because she acts very prerogative around the men to get there attention “Oh, she put her hands behind her back and leaned against the doorframe so that her body was thrown forward”. Curleys wife acting in this way shows the reader that she is so lonely, she thinks she has to act sexy and get all dressed up to get the ranch workers attention. Curley’s wife acting prerogative isn’t clear to the ranch workers that she’s just trying to get attention; they just think she is even more of a tart “Well, I think curleys married a tart”.

As there are no other females on the ranch the reader knows about, the only girls the men know are curleys wife and the ladies in the...