“Don’t you even take a look at that bitch. I don’t care what she says and what she does. I never seen a piece of jail-bait worse than her. You leave her be
George warns Lennie away just in case he gets to close to her and Curly gets annoyed and starts a fight with him.
I think that she is very lonely. As she is the only woman on the ranch she has no one to talk or gossip to. She tries to talk to some of the workers but they are scared of what Curly would do to them. This definitely adds to her loneliness.
She always claims to be ‘looking for Curly’, which I think, is an excuse to chat up the ranch workers. But definitely, the main reason she feels so unhappy and alone is because of her husband. He forces his wife to feel alone because he forbids her out of the house and, I am pretty sure he beats her. Also, he visits brothels and this makes her feel inadequate. For Curley’s wife Curly was second choice and he acts like it. She does have several dreams of a better life. When men promise her careers in acting and film she believes them but I think that they just wanted her to sleep with them.
Because her dreams fail she marries Curly. Now she is trapped on this ranch with no one to speak to apart from Curly who is not much comfort although he does try with his glove full of Vaseline. This makes her feel isolated:
“Because this guy says I was a natural.”
When she dies, It shows her loneliness disappearing from her face. When she is alive she is troubled and her face is always full of emotions but when she dies all that goes away from her. And she is left happy and trouble-free.
Curly is described as a small man. His hands closed into fists his glance was at once calculating and pugnacious Curly lashed his body around Curly is a born fighter everything about him confirms that. He is like this because he feels inferior mainly because he is the boss’s son and he needs to have a lot of power over the ranch workers. But Curly feels threatened by big workers like Lennie so he beats them up to keep his reputation and retain his power over the workers:
“Curly stepped over to Lennie like a terrier… ‘Come on, ya big bastard… No big son-of-a-bitch is gonna laugh at me. Ill show ya who’s yella.’”
He also feels ashamed of how unhappy his wife is. He feels that this could spoil his prominence and respect that he has earned. This also amounts to his fight with Curly. Curly gets his violent attitude of life from his hay day when he was a boxer. He hangs onto this dream for as long as he can. I think that it is his way of dealing with the rejection from is wife.
Curly cannot be friendly with any of the ranch workers because he is the bosses son and the boss is never friendly with his workers incase he has to sack them. This adds to Curley’s collection of bad feelings about himself. Also, in order to have any kind of control over the workers he must not be friendly with them so he can keep his reputation and people can stay scared of him.
The loneliest character in the whole book is Crooks. Where Curley’s wife had Curly and Curly had his wife Crooks has no one. He has no one to speak to, no one to be with, and no one to converse with and no one to keep him from going mad. He was completely alone. Because of this he didn’t know what was right and what was wrong. He even tries to explain this himself.
“‘Well, I got a right to have a light. You go on get outa my room. I ain’t wanted in the bunk-house, and you ain’t wanted in my room.’”
In chapter 4 Crooks gets the chance to be horrible to some one else. He turns on Lennie and starts to be really nasty to him suggesting George wont come back from the whorehouse. But he then backs down for fear of Lennie losing his rag. Crooks enjoys talking to Lennie because he knows that none of it will come out and he can tell Lennie anything he wants to. He confides in Lennie and begins to trust him with secrets he has never told anyone. Crooks starts to describe his earliest memories and he begins to reflect on his own life. After picking on Lennie Crooks has a new found confidence that makes him feel almost equal to Lennie and Candy. As Lennie describes his dream ranch, Crooks is very cynical about it and he doesn’t believe it will happen:
“You’re nuts… you’re crazy as a wedge…”
Crooks is feeling good at this point and he feels self-assured that he can take on anything. But then Curley’s wife appears and starts to stir everything up. The atmosphere in the room becomes tense and nasty. Crooks starts to get annoyed because he was having a good conversation which he doesn’t often get which made him feel very good about himself and Curley’s wife has started to tear everything apart. He starts to get almost angry and stands up to her telling her:
“You got no rights messing around in here at all. Now you jus get out, an get out quick.”
But he forgets about his place in life and he is shown where he belongs by Curley’s wife. She starts on him:
“You know what I could do if you open your trap? Well, you keep you place, then, Nigger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain’t even funny.”
Crooks has no reply to this. Then the old insecure Crooks comes out. Crooks drew into himself and reduced himself to nothing. He then has no personality, no ego nothing to arouse like or dislike. This is a sign of the loneliness Crooks has experienced in his life. He must have done it before in order to be so good at it. All the time he has spent by himself he has convinced himself that he is worth nothing and nobody cares about him. This is a form of torture for Crooks.
In conclusion, I believe that loneliness is a disease. George had Lennie and Lennie had George to combat the terrible affects of it. But there were other who were not so lucky. Crooks was intensely unhappy, unconfident and seriously mentally damaged from the lasting affects of loneliness. Curley’s wife was killed essentially by loneliness it was that that made her talk to the farm workers and Lennie this lead to her death.
