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Relationships in the grapes of wrath
Short summary of the grapes of wrath
Short summary of the grapes of wrath
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In chapter one, Steinbeck introduces us to George and Lennie, two migrant workers who are traveling to a ranch in Soledad, California. The odd duo is trying to survive and save some money during the 1930’s Great Depression. In chapter two, George and Lennie show up to the ranch on the second day of their journey. They meet Curley, Curley’s wife, the Swamper, slim and Carlson. They are learning about the boss and the others on the ranch. George lies to the boss about why they showed up late to work and tells him the bus driver gave them a bum steer: really, George wanted to enjoy nature bit longer. They learn that Curley and the boss both wear high-heeled boots to show that they do not work. They also learn that Curley is a boxer …show more content…
and the Swamper has only one hand. In chapter three, George trusts Slim enough to tell him about why they were run out of weed. Carlson convinces Candy to shoot his old dog that stinks and is suffering, Slim give Lennie a puppy because his dog had a litter. Curley goes looking for his wife and accuses Slim of sleeping with her. They both walk into the bunkhouse and while they are arguing, Lennie ands up crushing Curley’s hand. Before the guys take him to the hospital, Slim tells Curley that if he does not want the truth to get out, then he will tell everyone that his hand got caught in a machine. This is the protect George and Lennie from getting fired. In chapter four we are introduced to Crooks’ living space.
Crooks has his own room because he is black and can’t go into the bunkhouse. Lennie came into his room because he needed someone to talk to due to all the other guys going into town. Candy came looking for Lennie in crooks room to discuss the dream. Crooks heard the conversation and wants in on the dream as well. Curley’s wife comes in the room because she is lonely, she discovers Lennie broke Curley’s hand and said he deserved it. The guys come back from town, George discovers Lennie in crooks room, crooks tells the guys he was just kidding and no longer wants in because he feels not good enough. In chapter five, Lennie was in the barn with dead puppy. Lennie was playing with the puppy and thought it was going to bite him so he slapped it and killed it. Lennie also killed Curley’s wife when she came into the barn, she wanted Lennie to feel her hair and ends up braking her neck while everyone is out playing horse shoe. Candy finds Curley’s wife dead in the barn and goes and gets George. George knows Lennie is the one who killed her so he goes and gets Carlson’s luger while Candy got the other guys. George lies to the guys and tells them that Lennie would of gone South but he really went
North. In chapter six, After Lennie has killed Curley’s wife, he went to the brush by the river to hide and wait for George when George got there he shot him in the back of the head where his skull meets the spine. George shot Lennie because Lennie killed Curley’s wife, and the other guys were going to torture him.
Curley’s Wife in ‘Of Mice and Men’ is used cleverly by Steinbeck to create sympathy amid the reader but also to represent the position of women in 1930s America. Through an intelligently designed pattern of events in the book, we feel varying amounts of sympathy for Curley’s Wife and thus unconsciously acquire information regarding the issues women had to face in the 1930s. In this essay I will evaluate the extent that Steinbeck presents Curley’s Wife as a sympathetic character and its relation to 1930s America.
In John Steinbeck’s book Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck portrays Curley’s wife as a flirtatious, mischievous, and over all isolated woman. Steinbeck doesn’t give this character a name, yet she is one of the most important characters in the story. Curley’s wife first comes off as flirtatious to the main characters, George and Lenny, when they first hear about her from the character Candy . Candy is talking about how she gives men “the eye”. He also displays his feelings about her by saying, “Well, I think Curley’s married… a tart”(28). This is setting George and Lenny up to expect she is a flirt.. Steinbeck describes Curley’s wife in her first introduction as a scantily dressed woman.. Steinbeck writes, “Both men [George and Lenny] glanced up, for the rectangle of sunshine in the doorway was cut off. A girl was standing there looking in. She had full, roughed lips and wide-spaced eyes, heavily made up. Her fingernails were red. Her hair hung in little rolled cluster, like sausages. She wore a cotton house dress and red mules, on the insteps of which were little bouquets of red ostrich feathers”(31). The color red is sometimes considered for portraying a sign of danger or sex. This passage supports Curley’s wife as being flirtatious and also how she’s dangerous and can cause trouble displaying herself while she is married. Also, when George and Lenny are talking to Curley’s wife she tries to flirtatiously talk to them too. After their first conversation she re-adjusts herself. Steinbeck displays her with “She put her hands behind her back and leaned against the door frame so that her body was thrown forward”(31). Steinbeck is explaining to the reader in detail that Curley’s wife is trying to show herself to Lenny and George to get thei...
Curley's wife, an accident that seals his own fate and destroys not only his dreams but George's and Candy's as well. In the beginning Lennie used to pet mice that his Aunt Clara used to give him, he would always end up killing them because he didn't know his own strength. Lennie never killed any pet or person purposely; he pets too roughly and kills them accidentally. An example of his rough tendencies is in the first chapter (page7) when Lennie wants to keep a dead mouse and George wouldn't let him Lennie says" Uh-uh. Jus' a dead mouse, George.
How does the reader’s perception of Curley’s Wife change through the book? In Of Mice and Men the reader’s opinion of Curley’s Wife changes throughout the book, in the beginning of the book the reader looks at her as trouble. Near the end the reader starts to feel sympathetic towards her. Although all the characters look at her as a “tramp”, despise, and avoid her, the reader sees her differently. The reader sees how miserable she is, and how many other things she has to put up with everyday. She might not be the nicest person out there, but she is still a person with feelings. The reader’s feelings drastically change from the beginning of the book to the end. She is perceived negatively repeatedly throughout the book, by all the characters at many different times. She is known as the “tramp” at the ranch, the reader would obviously think negatively of Curley’s Wife when all the characters are talking trash about her. In chapter 2 George said to Lennie “I seen ‘em poison before, but I never seen no piece of jail bait worse than her. You leave her be.” After reading this how could the reader see Curley’s Wife in any other way. As the reader I also despised Curley’s Wife, I didn’t want her to get close to Lennie or George because I knew she would try and get them in trouble or something bad would happen with her being there. This quote specifies how almost every man felt on this ranch, and this was very early on in the book, George had not even had a decent conversation with her and he was already talking about her in this way. This was not only in the beginning of the book; at the scene of her death Candy was shouting “you got damn tramp” at her dead body. This shows even when she is dead, how little everyone cared about her. The r...
Curley's wife is seen as a cheap possession, a toy that belongs to Curley. A possession that he gets to control. His lack of love, respect and attention results to her death in the end. By all the men she’s seen as a tramp, they think that she’s out cause trouble. But the truth is she’s desperately lonely. She just wants someone to talk to. She’s missed out on a wonderful life that could have been hers, and that hurts her.
George and Lennie live in a hopeless present but they somehow try to keep a foot in an idealized future. They dream of one day running their own ranch, safe and answerable to no one. Others such as Curley's wife dreams of being a movie star, Crooks, of hoeing his own patch and Candy's couple of acres'.The dream ends with the death of Lennie.
- Lord Chesterfield once said, "You must look into people, as well as at them." If you apply this logic to Curley's wife and Crooks in the book, Of Mice and Men, you will find that they are the same in many ways despite their differences in race and sex. These two unfortunate souls live in a world full of shattered dreams, discrimination, and loneliness.
In Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Curley’s wife may seem insignificant character because of her lack of identity. As Curley’s wife develops, we can see that she isn’t the unimportant character readers expect her to be but much more interesting and complex.
George begins to hear the footsteps of the other men. To prevent the men from killing Lennie, George decides he has to kill Lennie himself. The scene is almost parallel to when Carlson shot Candy’s dog and Candy regretted that he did not kill his dog himself, but allowed a complete stranger to do it. As George talks to Lennie about the dream farm, “.[George] raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it close to the back of Lennie’s head. He pulled the trigger.
When Lennie was born his Aunt Clare took care of him instead of his parent since his parents did not want him because he was born with mental problems .During Lennie’s childhood he got to meet George Milton and they became best friends . Later on when Aunt Clara died George started taking care of Lennie they were always together even in their job then one day while Lennie and George where at a party they had to leave from weed since Lennie was accused of raped even though it was not since Lennie just wanted to touch a girls dress that he thought was pretty . They left to California where they got a new job in a ranch . Where George tell slim about everything that happened in weed . Later in the after noon carlson started complaining about candy's dog of how old and stinky he was so he offered to kill the dog and candy did not want to but Carlson eventually convinced Candy after Carlson kills the dog Candy regrets it ,he says he would have prefer been him the one who kill the dog instead of Carlson and while Candy was regretting it Lennie wanted George to tell the story about the farm they will have so he did.
In the novel Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck has Curley’s wife plays a big role. Her role is to be a catalyst and represents role of women during her time period, in the 1930s. This is visible as Curley's wife changes the scene immediately when she shows up. By changing the scene I mean she changes other people’s expressions, the looks on their faces and also changes what was meant to happen but did not eventually happen. And Curley's wife changes the scene because she either seeks attention or makes others weaker than her. But her actions do have some consequences. For example her own death and the death of the dreams of every other ranch worker, except for Curley’s dreams. I also found that she acts like her husband.
It all starts with a short-lived and tragic pouring out of the soul by Curley’s wife to Lennie, “Well, I ain’t told this to nobody before. Maybe I ought’n to. I don’t like Curley.” (page 89). Their conversation goes ok until Curley’s wife makes one fatal mistake, “But [my hair] is soft and fine… Here- feel right here.” (page 90). Lennie’s mental disability coupled with his addiction to touching soft things ends in a tragedy for Curley’s wife. He pets her harder and she protests harder until she is trying to scream, and Lennie holds a hand over her mouth and shakes her to try and get her to stop. He breaks her neck. “I done a bad thing.” (page 91). Lennie realizes what he has done and becomes suddenly scared of what George will do, “George’ll be mad.” (page 92). Lennie and Curley’s wife’s brief relationship goes terribly awry, one of the two best examples of Steinbeck’s theme, the second being Lennie’s own death. However, Lennie did trust George enough to hide in the bushes like he had told him to. Now comes Candy and George’s final interaction. Candy finds Curley’s wife dead in the barn and immediately shows George, who instantly realizes what Lennie has done. Candy goes into denial and asks if he and George can still achieve their American dream together, “You an’ me can still get that little place, can’t we George?” (page 94) but George loses all hope after
Slim, George, Carlson, and Curley went into town for the day, they went without Candy and Lennie. When Lennie starts to wonder he finds himself wandering around the Ranch. Lennie comes to the barn, walks towards the doorway, the buck was laying on his bed in his room. Lennie attempts to go in but Crooks doesn’t want him to. Crooks is an older man who has a curve in his back from an accident that happened when he got kicked by a horse, that’s how he got the name. Crooks doesn’t have much but one thing he had was his own room. Crooks is not allowed to be where white people are or even talk with them that is why he is so isolated. After Crooks realizes that Lennie
Crooks is telling Candy you will probably not get the land because he has seen people try but they never succeed. He is right Lennie and George end up never getting their plot of land. This use you might not notice at first, but if you look back you will notice Steinbeck cleverly hid this use of foreshadowing.
Curley’s Wife is the only girl on the ranch, so when she gets bored she tries to talk to the guys. But they don't really talk to her to stay from making trouble with the bosses son Curley. George and Lennie comes to the farm the janitor (Candy) tell them that's she’s a “tart”. George doesn't like her anyway he tells Lennie not to talk to her at all. One day Lennie is in the barn playing with his dog, letting it lick his fingers and stuff an it bites and he kills it. Lennie tries to hide it under the hay in the barn. Curley’s Wife comes in the barn ask him what are you doing he tells her nothing. They both set down she starts talking to Lennie he tells he not supposed to be talking to her. And she goes on about how she's the only girl on the farm and ect. Curley’s wife's to tell him about her dream she said “He says he was gonna put me in the movies i never got the letter so i married Curley.” (Steinbeck 88) She is saying that she doesn't like being Curley's Wife and wanted to be in the movies and have nice clothes. As we go on in the story Lennie tells her that he likes soft things. Curley’s Wife lets him feel her hair. Lennie starts to rube harder and harder and she starts to yell. Lennie grabs Curley’s wife up and starts to shake her hard and broke her neck! Curley’s Wife dream never comes true because one she never got the letter to be in the movies and also she gets killed. This