Hierarchy

Question 1

Social vs economic hierarchy

Answer 1

• Slim is contrasted with Curley, who has authority over the other workers due to his status as the boss’s son but struggles to earn their respect.
• For instance, while Curley wears “high-heeled boots” to make up for his short stature and remind the workers of his wealth and status,
• Candy explains pointedly that Slim “don’t need to wear no high-heeled boots on a grain team.”
• Unlike aggressive and cruel Curley, Slim is a source of moral authority in the novella.
• He correctly sees that Lennie “ain’t mean,” and later the reader learns that he is one of the only men to ignore the racist prohibition against entering Crooks’s room.
• Slim is also the only one to rightly understand that George kills Lennie out of mercy, and comforts George in his resulting misery.
• The contrast between Slim and Curley serves to suggest that the economic power of Curley and his father is artificial, a violation of the natural order in which Slim ought to rank highest.

Question 2

Crooks being at the bottom

Answer 2

• Curley’s wife: ‘I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain’t even funny.”
• Crooks is at the bottom of the ranch hierarchy and Curley’s wife reminds him, Crooks is the only POC on the ranch and so racism like this isn’t uncommon
• ‘strung up on a tree’ is a reference to the lynchings, carried out by white supremacy groups such as the Klu Klux Klun who were very active in South America during the Great Depression
• It is clear that Steinbeck has used Crooks’ interaction with Curley’s wife as a microcosm of the fear POC lived in during the Great Depression and how white supremacists (represented by Curley’s wife) wouldn’t hesitate to carry out these acts due to the biased courts of America which gave them little or no repercussions when they committed these awful crimes.
• A reader would therefore feel an increased sympathy for Crooks, knowing how helpless he is in this Situation

Question 3

Curley’s wife being isolated because she’s a woman

Answer 3

• She’s the only woman on the ranch
• All men talk bad about her behind her back. Lennie and George both being Male are immediately accepted into this discussion
• “Well, ain’t she a looloo?”
• ‘I bet she even gives the stable buck the eye’
• Show how normalised and accept misogyny in society was as neither George or Lennie stand up for her
• She’s been on the ranch for years and is isolated from everyone. George and Lennie have just arrived but are immediately accepted by the others. reflect the social hierarchy of the ranch