George
"The first man was small and quick, dark of face, with restless eyes and sharp, strong features. Every part of him was defined: small,strong hands, slender arms, a thin and bony nose." (Pg. 4)
"When I think of the swell time I could have without you , I go nuts. I never get no peace." (Pg 13)
"No-look. I was just fooling Lennie. 'Cause I want you to stay here with me." (Pg. 14)
George is Lennies care taker he travels with him and gets him work with him and food. George often gets irated and yells at Lennie for not remembering or knowing things but afterwards he always feels bad. While George wishes he could be off on his own drinking whiskey and staying in cat houses he also cares about Lennie and stays with him to keep the promise he made to Lennies Aunt Clara to care for him. Despite the fact that George used to be really mean to Lennie by playing jokes on him you can clearly see he cares for him.
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Lennie
"Behind him walked his opposite, a huge man, shapeless of face, with large, pale eyes, with wide, sloping shoulders; and he walked heavily dragging his feet a little, the way a bear drags his paws." (Pg. 4)
"I'd pet 'em, and pretty soon they bit my fingers and I pinched their heads a little and then they was dead-because they was so little." (Pg. 11)
"He ain't bright. Hell of a good worker, though. Hell of a nice fella, but he ain't bright." (Pg. 34)
Lennie is a big guy who doesn't know how to care for himself. He has to stay with George to be able to live. Lennie also doesnt knows his own strenghth often hurting and killing things, mostly the mice he carries around to pet. Lennie never does mean things on purpose he never means to hurt anyone or anything but he often doesn't know how to behave properly so he ends up doing bad things. You can also tell he looks up to George by seeing how he always listens to him and does what he says.
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Candy
"The door opened and a tall, stoop-shouldered old man came in." (Pg. 21)
"S'pose I went in with you guys. Tha's three hunderd an' fifty bucks I'd put in" (Pg. 58)
""They'll can me purty soon. Jus' as I can't swamp out the bunk houses they'll put me on the country. (Pg. 59)
Candy is an old guy without a hand who only works on the ranch because he has no where else to go. He wants to leave the ranch because he feels like no one will want him around soon. He, like all the other men of that time, wants to own his own land and work for himself. He joins Lennie and George by giving them money so they can own their own ranch together.
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The Boss
"A little stocky man opened the door. He wore high-heeled boots to practice be he was not a labouring man." (Pg. 21)
"Well God knows he don't need no brains to buck barely bags. But don't you try to put nothing over, Milton."(Pg. 23)
Curley
"At that moment a young man with a brown face, with brown eyes and a head of tightly curled hair." (Pg. 25)
"Curley's pretty handy He's done quite a bit in the ring."a (Pg. 26)
Curley's Wife
"Well-she got the eye." (Pg. 28)
"She had full, rouged lips and wide-spaced eyes, heavily made up. Her fingernails were red. Her hair hung in little rolled clusters, like sausages." (Pg. 31)
"I get lonely," she said. "You can talk to people, but I can't talk to nobody but Curley. Else he gets mad. How'd you like not to talk to anybody?" (Pg. 84)
Curley's wife is a lonely girl since no one on the farm will talk to her because of Curley. She goes around flirting with the men on the ranch and trying to talk to them. You can also see how lonely she is when she taks to Lennie. While we only see her occasionally for breif periods of times, she brings an important aspect into the story.
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Slim
"Big tall skinner."
"Hell of a nice fella. Slim don't need to wear no high heeled boots on a grain team."
"He held a crushed Stetson hat under his arm while he combed his long, black, damp hair straight back. .... There was a gravity in his manner and a quiet so profound that all talk stopped when he spoke. His authority was so great that his word was taken on any subject, be it politics or love. His hatchet face was ageless. His ear heard more than was said to him and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought. His hands, large and lean, were as delicate in their action as those of a temple dancer." (pg. 33)
Slim is a man who is respected on the ranch. He runs the place when the boss is not around. What he says goes; when Carlson asks Slim to tell Candy to kill his dog Candy's dog is killed when Slim says yes. Slim also knows how to talk to people. He lets them do the talking but engages just enough. He often invites confidence so people feel as if they can open up to them. You can see this in the book when George tells Slim about their past without even thinking about it. Slim also understands what it's like to be alone without being mean about it.
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Carlson
"A powerful big-stomached man came into the bunk house." (pg. 35)
"Why'n't you get Candy to shoot his old dog and give him one of the pups to raise up."s
Carlson is a man who's gone a little mean from being alone. He speaks with bluntness and doesn't ever think about the value of life. There are three times that this can be seen. The first time is when he tells Slim to get Candy to shoot his dog and give him a new one to replace him, the second is after he shoots Candy's dog and then just sits on his bed cleaning his gun, the third time is when he gets excited about chasing after Lennie under Curley's orders. Carlson immdiatly offers to get his gun and when George walks off with Slim he doesn't understand why what happened is eating away George.
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Whit
"You do if you been around these big ranches much. Guy that wants to look over a ranch comes in Sat'day afternoon. He gets Sat'day night super an' three meals on Sunday, and he can quit Monday mornin' after breakfast without turning his hand. But you come to work Friday noon. You got to put in a day an' a half no matter how you figure." (pg. 49)
"If you got idears, you ought ta come in town with us guys tomorra nigt." (pg. 51)
Whit, a minor character, is important in showing what the life of ranch hand is like when he isn't busy at his job. Whit reads pulp magazines, plays cards, and goes to Clara's or Susy's house on the weekend. He simply lives for today with no thought for his future and no concern for saving money. You can also see that he has been around for a while by the fact that he knows how a ranch usually works.
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Crooks
"And scattered about the floor were a number of possessions, for, being alone, Crooks leave his things about, and being a stable Buck and a cripple he was more permanent than the other men, and he had accumulated more possessions than he could carry on his back." (pg. 65)
"He kept his distamce and demanded that other people keep theirs. His body was bent over to the left by his crooked spine, and his eyes lay deep in his head, and because of their depth seemed to glitter with intensity. His lean face was lined with deep black wrinkles, and he had thin, pain-tightened lips which were lighter than his face."
"A guy needs someone to be near him."
Crooks is a man with a crooked back from being kicked by a horse. He is the best example of the theme of lonliness. He has to sit in his bunk alone reading or playing horseshoes with no one to talk to. He tries to act as if he wants no one around but you can see from his thinly vieled defenses that he is lonley. You can see that he wants someone to talk to.
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