English: GCSE Controlled Assessment – Of Mice and Men
Heroes and Villains: Explore the ways Sympathy and/or Dislike of a character is created in Of Mice and Men.
Even before plunging into profound depths of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, it is unequivocal that the novel is a microcosm of American life in the 1930s. As a result of the Great Depression, the setting is abundant with hardships which immensely mould the reader’s ambivalent feelings towards the most dominant female character in this book: Curley’s Wife. Steinbeck’s depiction of this flirtacious but “lonely” temptress has the reader leaping from heartbreaking sympathy to nurturing an intense abhorrence for Curley’s Wife.
In the very first few moments that the novel introduces Curley’s Wife, she is immediatley condemned to the reader’s dislike because the author depicts her character as a threat to not just George and Lennie, but their aspirations to “live off the fatta the land”. The author intends to establish Curley’s Wife by labelling her to be an ominous threat from the very beginning as “the rectangle of sunshine was cut off” by her mere first appearance. Steinbeck’s particular use of the word “sunshine” is symbolic of hope which is derived from the main theme in this novel – the American Dream, or rather a paradise that has resulted in false hope flourishing in their hearts. This is in correlation to the “sunshine” which is evidently referring to George and Lennie’s vision of owning a farm. Furthermore, the fact that she is “cutting off” this dream, indicates that she possesses the power of a threat and hence, an obstacle in our protagonists’ paths. Curley’s Wife’s power to tarnish their dreams stems from the fact that she is a woman and this is Steinbeck’s strong reflection of the sexist minds that dominated the American society in the 1930s. Ironically, she appears abruptly after George and