Of Mice and Men- Curley's Wife

1685 Words7 Pages
“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.” This quote was said by Mother Theresa and it depicts the life of Curley’s wife. This book was written during the Great Depression. The Great Depression was a time that everybody was poor. Not just the United States, but the entire world was in poverty. Curley’s wife was living through this time, but she had the worst poverty of all… loneliness. As the quote suggests, people can have no money and still be happy but the worst feeling of all is the feeling of being unloved. Curley’s wife’s life was defined by her loneliness. She was an outcast. She was completely isolated. Never wanted, never loved. Curley treats her as if she were an object, and Steinbeck puts more ‘loneliness’ to her by not giving her a name because she’s merely a property belonging to Curley. In Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Curley’s wife is a character who is alone and misunderstood. Her life on a ranch in the 1930s, during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl is even worse because she is the only woman. Her life is surrounded my men who give her no respect. Throughout the story she is disrespected by them and after a series of events unfold, she ends up caught in a situation that she cannot escape. Curley’s wife is introduced into the book by the men as petty, cruel, and conceited. The men make her seem like she was a bad person, but in reality she was just lonely. Curley’s wife is the loneliest character in the novel. At the end of the novel you finally understand what Curley’s wife is really like and what she has bottled up inside of her. Curley’s wife is a complex character and it requires some thought to truly understand what kind of a person she is. By the end, it comes to realization that Curley’s wife is dependent, unenthusiastic, and naïve. Curley’s wife is not a dumb woman. She had enough logic to find
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