OMAM Characters

George is small and quick, dark of face, with restless eyes and sharp, strong features.

George can be described by a few distinct features. He is short-tempered but a caring and loyal friend whose constant complaints with Lennie against life never diminish his devotion to his friend's defense. The first words of George, a strict warning to Lennie not to drink too much lest he get ill, set the foundation of their relationship. George may sometimes be tight and impatient but he never strays from his primary purpose of protecting Lennie.

However, unlike Lennie, George does change as the story moves forward. During his conversation with Slim, the reader discovers that he is capable of transformation and development, during which he reveals he once manipulated Lennie for his own amusement.

He is longing for the day when he can enjoy the freedom of leaving work and watching a baseball match. However, more relevant than a ball game is the idea of living with Lennie in health and comfort, away from people like Curley and Curley's aunt, who seem to live only to bring trouble to them. Lennie is largely responsible for George's belief in this safe haven, but eventually the world's predatory nature asserts itself and George can't hold that belief any more. By killing Lennie, George spares his friend the brutal death Curley's lynch mob will bring, but he also sets his own vision of a fair, brotherly future to rest.

George

Lennie Small is a migrant worker such as his colleague and working partner George Milton. Lennie is completely dependent on George regardless of his intellectual illness. Both harbor a dream of owning a farm together, a dream that Lennie believes wholeheartedly and wishes to tend the rabbits to. He's portrayed as a huge, lumbering and childlike character, with the body of a man but a child's mind, as Slim observes, "He's jes" like a child "(p.47). He has never understood how to manage his powerful body, a gentle and caring character, so he does not recognize his own physical strength. Nearly every scene Lennie appears in confirms that these are its only characteristics. Lennie likes to treat gentle things like baby children, clothes and makeup for women, which leads to other tragedies. His enthusiasm for the vision of their future farm proves contagious as he convinces George, Candy, Crooks and the reader that such a paradise could be possible even though the dream is nearly impossible and has been tried and failed many times before.

Repetition of Lennie's characteristics by Steinbeck is important to the book. Steinbeck makes Lennie the least interesting character in the novel, not witnessing any major growth or improvement as a character and staying exactly as the opening pages excited the readers first.

Lenny

Curley is a "thin young man with a brown face, with brown eyes and a head of tightly curly hair." According to Candy, Curley is an amateur boxer and constantly picks fights, particularly with guys who are bigger than he is. Curley is trying to prove his masculinity by accumulating fights.

"What the hell you laughin' at?"

"I'll show you who's yella" when talking to Lennie

Curley is the son of the boss, and because his father appears only once, Curley is the principal representative in land-owning class novella. Like his father, Curley wears "high-heeled boots" to mark his wealth and status, and the smallness of his stature is most likely lowered. The principal trait of Curley 's character is vulnerability. He is always anxious to retain his supremacy over the staff and sometimes he picks battles twice his size with guys. His wife says that Curley "spends all his time deciding what he'll do to guys he doesn't like," which appears to be the case as he attempts to "throw inta Slim a scare" as he believes Slim is flirting with his wife.

Curley

Curley's Wife

Curley's wife is the only female character who is featured directly in the book. Most of the male characters on the ranch feel intimidated by her, calling her jailbait because she is flirtatious and her husband is abusive and jealous. They perceive her as a tart because of her way of acting around all the men in the ranch. The novel never calls Curley's aunt, which shows how she isn't respected as a human. Her portrayal reflects the hostile attitude towards women at the time probably possessed by men such as the ranchworkers. She is never regarded in comparison to her mother, and is rarely treated as a respectable person by the other characters.

The comments made by Curley's wife here are brief and plain, reflecting her sparse and minimal ranch life. Here, she is seen to use just a few words, even as she uses very few terms in her daily life. The horrible word is used because we can 'actually' use it to illustrate how alone she is, but the horrible word always reveals how miserable her life is. Here Curley's wife is angry, threatening the only people left on the ranch (Lennie, Crooks and Candy) while the rest are on the brothel, by referring to them as bound stiffs, that is, tramps. She repeats Ever'body to show how alone she feels, as if anything except her is being done by everyone in the world

Crooks is a colorful, sharp-witted, stable-handed black, who takes his name out of his crooked back. As most characters in the novel, he admits to be incredibly lonely. His reaction exposes the fact when Lennie visits him in his bed. At first, he waves Lennie away, trying to make a argument that if he is not welcome in white men 's houses as a black man, then whites are not welcome in his, but eventually his love for business wins out and he invites Lennie to sit with him. Like the wife of Curley, Crooks is a disenfranchised character who turns his vulnerability into a weapon to attack even weaker people. He is playing a mean game with Lennie, saying George's gone for good

He never relents as Lennie endangers him with physical abuse. The corrosive consequences that depression may have on a human are demonstrated by Crooks; his character evokes remorse as the roots of his brutal actions become clear. Maybe what Crooks needs more than anything else is a feeling of belonging — to experience simple things like the freedom to join the bunkhouse or play cards with the other guys. This ambition would explain why Crooks can not help but wonder if there could be room for him to come along and hoe in the garden, even if he has cause to question George and Lennie 's talk about the farm they intend to buy.

Crooks

One of the key themes of the film, and some of its primary icons, revolves around Sweets. The elderly handyman, ageing and leaving as a result of an accident with just one eye, fears the manager will quickly find him useless and insist that he abandon the ranch. Life on the ranch, of course,—especially Candy 's dog, once an excellent sheep herder but now toothless, foul-smelling, and age-brittle — supports Candy 's concerns. Career successes and existing interpersonal relations matter nothing, because when Carson demands that Candy help him put the dog out of his misery, it becomes clear. In a world like this, Candy's dog acts as a grim example of the fate that threatens everyone who escapes its usefulness.

Nevertheless, the vision of living out his days on their fantasy farm with George and Lennie distracts Candy from this bleak reality for a short period. He considers the few acres of land they represent worthy of the wealth of his hard-earned life, which testifies to his intense desire to dream in a world that is childlier than the one he lives in. Unlike George, Candy clings to the notion of opening up or putting aside jobs as he wants. So deep is his commitment to this notion that he pleads with himself and George to go ahead and purchase the farm as intended, even after he learns Lennie has murdered Curley's aunt.

Candy

He is an elderly handyman who lost his hand in a ranch accident and is kept on the payroll, often called "the swamper." Fearing he'll eventually be fired when he can't do his chores anymore, he convinces George to let him join their farm dream because he can bring the necessary money into the scheme. He owns an old sheep dog, which will become Lennie 's symbol before the novel finishes.

A professionally professional mule driver and the ranch 's respected "prince," Slim is the only character apparently at ease with himself. The other characters often try to counsel Slim. For example, the old man agrees to let Carlson shoot her only after Slim agrees that Candy should put his decrepit dog out of his misery. A calm, thoughtful man, Slim also knows the essence of the relationship between George and Lennie, and at the sad ending of the novel, comforts George.

Slim

A ranch-hand, Carlson complains bitterly about Candy’s old, smelly dog. He convinces Candy to put the dog out of its misery. When Candy finally agrees, Carlson promises to execute the task without causing the animal any suffering. Later, George uses Carlson’s gun to shoot Lennie. The insensitive ranch hand that is shooting a dog from Candy. He possesses a Luger, who George later uses to kill Lennie mercifully.

Carlson