Curley's Wife
... the ranch. When Lennie is in the barn and Curley's wife enters the reader is again aware of how lonely she is. Even though she realises that Lennie is not listening to her she is desperate to talk and we hear how isolated she feels. When Lennie tells her that he's not allowed to talk to her she cries ' What's the matter with me?' This shows her desperation to talk to others and how the need to do this has built up inside her. In a desperate attempt to gain Lennie’s attention she reveals more about her life. She now says that a man who 'was in pitchers' said that he was 'gonna put her in the Movies' and would write to her as 'soon as he got back to Hollywood'. The readers realise that this is an attempt to attract Lennie’s attention and to get him to talk to her more openly after noticing that he is mentally weaker and cannot easily resist her. In actual fact there was probably no letter and even no man, if there was he was probably trying to take advantage of her vanity anyway. I think that there was never a man and this was a ploy to make Lennie think more highly of her. The loneliness that engulfs her ensures that Curley’s wife cannot escape from the sexual image that she has been branded with. She therefore has no choice but to make the most out of this image and uses it as a means to be noticed and a means to have even a short conversation with someone. She has adapted to use her sexual attractiveness to gain and keep the attention of the migrant workers at the ranch. Like a child she has realised that she has a power and will try to make as much out of this a possible, she uses her attractiveness to try and manipulate the others on the ranch. At first she can only manage to get their attention for a short time, but over a period of time she can keep hold of their attention for longer. Any sympathy that we might have felt for Curley's wife is reduced a little because of the attitude she shows when talking to the men and by the way she treats Crooks. She is scornful of Candy, Crooks and Lennie, referring to them as 'a nigger an' a dum-dum and a lousy ol' sheep' and she laughs at their dream of having a ranch of their own, dismissing it as 'Balony'. Far worse though is the way she rem...