english lit-curleys wife

Question 1

Give quotes showing how:

Curley’s Wife is isolated

Answer 1

“she looked from one face to another, and they were all closed against her.”

• imagery ~ curley’s wife looks for anyone to acknowledge her presence. Desperation for emotional connection and camaraderie.
• metaphor ~ identifies the aloof dynamic between the men and curley’s wife. Reader can discern the manifold rejection she faces with her position. Highlights her sensitivity and heightened feelings of abandonment.

“Well i ain’t giving you no trouble. Think i don’t like to talk to somebody ever’ once in a while?”

• declarative ~ shows a desire to assert herself in a place where she feels marginalised and obscured.
• rhetorical question & idiom ~ thwarted tone and need for company. Confronts the men with her frustration and harrowing isolation. idiom carries positive connotations, the men talking to curley’s wife is special but out of the ordinary.

Question 2

Give quotes showing
Curley’s wife’s ill-treatment of others

Answer 2

“Nobody’d listen to you, an’ you know it. Nobody’d listen to you.”
-repetition of declarative~ exploits any vulnerability she senses in others, reminding Candy and Lennie that they are substandard amongst the ranchworkers.
-irony~ Curley’s wife is presented as a flawed protagonist (her malicious comments reflect her own feelings of powerlessness and abandonment).

“’Listen, nigger,’ she said. ‘You know what i can do to you if you open your trap?’”
-expletives, rhetorical question & sadistic tone~ curley’s wife has a readiness to shove crooks back into his protective shell in order to pose superiority in the ranch ‘hierarchy’.

Question 3

Give quotes showing how: the dreams Curley’s wife harbours are unrealistic

Answer 3

“She wore a cotton house dress with red mules, on the insteps of which were little bouquets of ostrich feathers.”
-imagery~ embellished exterior suggests a pinned hope on becoming a famous actress and feeling seen.
-symbolism~ reflect luxury and elegance as though she were a movie-star. Her dream is poignant and irrelevant as ostriches can’t fly suggesting eternal constrainment on the ranch and in her marriage, her dream will never take off.

“She had full, rouged lips and wide-spaced eyes, heavily made up”
-adjectives(full & rouged)~ flamboyance to hee character and a preoccupation with how others perceive her. red carries connotations of passion or sensuality, curleys wife has a fabricated makeup in order to be seen.
-juxtaposition, adjective(wide- spaced) ~ reflects innocence. Contrasting ideas propose her desire to appear as someone else who is assertive and unafraid to stand out.

Question 4

Give quotes showing how: Curley’s wife is an obstruction

Answer 4

“Both men glanced up, for the rectangle of sunshine was cut off.”
-pathetic fallacy & light imagery~ symbolises that for a brief moment, hope is lost. Foreshadows the loss of the dream farm will involve Curley’s wife. Her character can represent a concept of failed dreams

“Lennie’s eyes moved down her body, and though she did not seem to be looking at Lennie, she bridled a little.”
-imagery~ creates a vivid mental image of tension, hinting at underlying emotions or engagement between the characters.
-verb(bridled)~ foreshadows death of curleys wife, in how lennie oversteps a boundary.
Reflects the event in weed, hopelessness.

Question 5

Give quotes showing how:
Curley’s wife is a victim in her suffering and death

Answer 5

“Curley’s wife lay with a half-covering of yellow hay. And the meanness and the plannings and the discontent and the ache for attention were all gone from hee face.”
-repetition of conjunction & listing of nouns~ Curley’s wife’s death is her release. Scene of serenity rather than a disturbing death.
-verb(ache)~ hee life was even more unsettled than her death, she was distressed.