Quotes Flashcards
Crooks - segregation
Lives in a ‘little shed that leaned off the wall of the barn’
Slim and George’s conversation ‘They let him [Crooks] come in that night’
Crooks’ life
Crooks reveals that the white kids would come to play at his place but his ‘ol’ man didn’t like that’
‘there’s jus’ one family in Soledad’
Crooks - rejects companionship
-when Lennie comes into his room, he ‘stiffened and a scowl came on his face. His hand came out from under his shirt’
When Candy comes into his room, he says ‘if ever’body’s comin’ in, you might just as well’
Crooks - effects of loneliness
-He tells Lennie, ‘a guy gets too lonely an’ he gets sick’
Curley’s wife – treatment on the ranch
when George first sees her, he calls her a ‘tramp’ and ‘jailbait’
She says to Lennie, ‘You can talk to people, but I can’t talk to nobody but Curley. Else he gets mad’
Curley’s wife – seeks attention
‘She had full rouged lips’, ‘heavily made up’, ‘her fingernails were red. Her hair hung in little rolled clusters’, ‘she wore a cotton house dress and red mules’
called a ‘jailbait’
Candy - old and handicapped
‘When they can me here I wisht somebody’d shoot me. But they won’t do nothing like that. I won’t have no place to go, an’ I can’t get no more jobs’ (tells G+L)
Candy’s dog
’pale, blind old eyes’, ‘struggled lamely’
Candy says, ‘God, he was a good sheep dog when he was younger’
‘I been around him so much I never notice how he stinks’
George description
‘small and quick’ with ‘sharp, strong features’
‘sharply’ and ‘gently’
Lennie description
‘his [George’s] opposite, a huge man, shapeless of face’
-moves his feet ‘the way a bear drags his paws’
‘snorting into the water like a horse’
‘dabbled’ and ‘timidly’
George and Lennie’s dynamic
‘both wore shapeless hats and both carried tight blanket rolls slung over their shoulders’
’even in the open one [Lennie] stayed behind the other [George]’
Lennie ‘imitates George exactly’
George and Lennie’s symbiotic relationship
‘I got you to look after me, and you go me to look after you’
Lennie’s liability
‘You can’t keep a job and you lose me ever’ job I get’
In the fight: ’Lennie looked helplessly at George’
Compared to Candy’s dog - ’he [the dog] ain’t no good to you [Candy]’ and ‘That dog ain’t no good to himself’ (Carlson says to Candy)
George and Slim
‘You wouldn’ tell?…No, ‘course you wouldn’
’I can see Lennie ain’t a bit mean’
‘You hadda, George. I swear you hadda’
Impossibility of the dream
In the beginning, when they talk about their dreams, George says they will have ‘Red and blue and green rabbits, Lennie. Millions of ‘em’
’This thing they had never really believed in was coming true.’
Crooks says, ‘An’ never a God damn one of ‘em ever gets it.’
’a whore house or a blackjack game took what it takes’
Impossibility of the dream - Eden
the giant sycamore whose low branch is ‘worn smooth by men who have sat on it’
Crooks scoffs: ‘Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of land’ (tells Lennie)
Escapism
Workers had ’Western magazines ranch men love to read and scoff at and secretly believe’
’a whore house or a blackjack game took what it takes’
Return to childhood innocence
Crooks, ‘I remember when I was a little kid on my old man’s chicken ranch. Had two brothers. They was always near me, always there’
George, ‘I can build a smoke house like the one gran’pa had’
Hope for a dream
’Bill and me worked in that patch of field peas. Run cultivators, both of us’
Curley’s wife’s dream
she had ‘full, rouged lips’, her hair ‘in little rolled clusters’
’Coulda been in the moves, an’ had nice clothes’ ,‘coulda sat in them big hotels’ and ‘had pitchers took of me’
‘I tell you I ain’t used to livin’ like this. I coulda made something’ of myself.’ She said darkly. ‘Maybe I will yet.’
’because this guy says I was a natural’
George and Lennie’s dream
‘We’ll have a big vegetable patch and a rabbit hutch and chickens.’
’live off the fatta the lan’
’we’d have our own place where we belonged and not sleep in no bunk house’
Spread of the dream - Candy
Candy offers 300 dollars
’They looked at one another, amazed. This thing they had never really believed in was coming true.’
Spread of the dream - Crooks
‘If you…guys would want a hand to work for nothing’
‘Don’t make no difference who the guy is, long’s he’s with you’
‘You got no rights comin’ in a colored mans room.’ (to Curley’s wife)
Death of the dream - Crooks
Crooks ‘reduced himself to nothing. There was no personality, no ego’
he returns to loneliness, ‘rubbing his back’
Death of the dream - CW’s death
‘the meanness and the plannings and the discontent and the ache for attention were all gone from her face’
she was actually ‘sweet and young’
Death of the dream - Candy’s anguish
‘Ever’body knowed you’d mess things up’
Steinbeck reminds readers of his ‘wrist stump’
Death of the dream - Lennie’s death
’Ain’t gonna be no more trouble’
Transient lifestyle
Candy says ‘last guy that had this bed was a blacksmith’
Effect of this lifestyle
’Take a real smart guy and he ain’t hardly ever a nice fella’
-George says to Slim, ‘I seen the guys that go around on the ranches alone. That ain’t no good. They don’t have no fun. After a long time they get mean. They get wantin’ to fight all the time.’
Carlson says ‘shoot him right in the back of the head’
Absence of love
the boss is suspicious of George, and accuses him, ‘what stake you got in this guy? You takin’ his pay away from him?’
The hierarchy of power
First time Curley meets G+L, he tells them ‘nex’ time you answer when you’re spoke to’
The boss
’he wore high-heeled boots and spurs to prove he was not a labouring man’
‘little stocky man’
’I wrote Murray and Ready I wanted two men this morning’
‘After he questions G+L, he says ‘don’t try to put nothing over, ‘cause you can’t get away with nothing.’
Curley’s power
Curley ‘wore a work glove on his left hand’ – ‘he’s keepin’ that hand soft for his wife’
‘wore high-heeled boots’
Candy says, he ‘won’t ever get canned’
Curley’s insecurity
when he first meets G+L, his ‘hands closed to fists’ and he went ‘into a slight crouch’
his glance was ‘calculating’
When he sees his dead wife, he ‘came suddenly to life’
How others view Curley
Described by George as a ‘mean little guy’
Candy says, ‘seems like Curley is cockier’n even since he got married’
‘handy’
Slim
‘the prince of the ranch’, ‘royalty’, ‘ageless’
‘a gravity in his manner and so quiet so profound that all talk stopped when he spoke’
‘God-like’
‘master craftsmen’
George ‘taking on the tone of confession’
‘I can see Lennie ain’t a bit mean’
Slim vs Curley
Curley’s ‘glove fulla’ vaseline’
Slim’s hands are ‘large and lean’ and ‘delicate’
Curley is the Boss’s son
Slim is the ‘prince of the ranch’
Crook’s resilience
First line – ‘Yougotnorightto comeinmyroom.’
he has a ‘tattered dictionary’ and ‘a mauled copy of the California civil code for 1905’
’he has accumulated more possessions than he could carry on his back’
Curley’s wife
Other male ranch workers call her a ‘tart’ or ‘tramp’
George scolds Lennie when he says she is pretty: ‘I never seen no piece of jailbait worse than her. You leave her be’
Aunt Clara
‘she wore a huge gingham apron with pockets, and she was starched and clean’
says, ’He coulda had such a good time if it wasn’t for you’
Lennie - compared to animals
‘snorting into the water like a horse’
when Curley fights him: Lennie ‘bleated with terror’
Rabbits
Giant rabbit repeats ‘he gonna leave ya’
In the end, G+L still chant ‘tend the rabbits’
Sound conveying atmosphere
Carlson shooting C’s dog - ‘the silence came into the room. And the silence lasted.’
After killing CW - ’for the first time Lennie became conscious of the outside’
The end - ‘the shouts of men sounded again, this time much closer than before’
The cyclical structure
’the deep green pool of the Salinas River was still in the late afternoon’
