How Does Steinbeck Use Characterization In Of Mice And Men

Characterization is the process by which the writer reveals the personality of a character. Steinbeck uses characterization to show the personality of each character which has a significant meaning in the books since each character represented a struggle at the time and then put a positive to it, for example if someone is lonely, Steinbeck wil have someone portect that character. Curley was the person in the book causing all the problems/issues that needed to be fixed. Curley was put into the story to represent the criticism of power and of American society, without Curley in the story, there would be no conflict and Lennie would have not been killed.

John Steinbeck used Curley for conflict Curley represented criticism of American society

The novel will obviously have some conflict but nothing compared to the conflicts Curley brought to the story. The novel is built around Lennie and George on the ranch but Curley will always instigate them and cause problems between everyone. Without Curley, the book would be extremely boring and would most likely not be as popular as it is now. His jealously is a big part of the novel as well. Since he is a pretty small guy but has a bold personality, his jealousy causes many issues including not letting his wife talk to anyone, picking fights with people, and being aggressive toward others. Curley's wife knows her worth and she use to talk to other ranch workers but when they got married he did not let her talk to anyone, if she talked to anyone else he would get mad. Curley wanted to show the other men on the ranch how good he was at boxing so he wanted to fight Lennie but he caused Lennie to get scared and crush his hand which ended his boxing career. Curley crushing his hand caused Slim and himself to come to an agreement to lie about what happened to his hand and say that he got hurt by machinery so the other men would not laugh and embarrass

George killing Lennie at that time was to have him die with no pain or anger and to not have him killed by Curley and his men. Without Curley in this novel, this huge event and conflict in the story would not be necassary. Which would alter the book drastically causing whole different conflicts, situations, and ending. Curley caused all the conflicts in the book like when he is trying to boss around Lennie and try to fight him which led to his hand getting crushed by Lennie. If George were to kill Lennie without Curley in the book there would be no possible way to justify killing him. Curley gave George a reason to kill him and end problems with Lennie and