Objective:
Students will be able to identify
different types of conflict in Chapter 4.
Get Ready:
Get Ready:
1.
What is a conflict?
4 Types of Conflict
4 Types of Conflict
•
1. Man vs. Man
•
2. Man vs. Self
•
3. Man vs. Nature
Curly’s Wife…wife should we
Curly’s Wife…wife should we
like her?
• We should feel sorry for Curley’s wife because she is lonely. After reading her conversation with Lennie. “she went on with her story quickly before she get interrupted” “ ain't I got a right to talk to nobody” this shows us that Curley’s wife is trying to explain to
Lennie what her life is like before he disappears.
• She wants to go through it without stopping because she really
wants to share it with him because he’s the first person who hasn’t walked away from her, so she feels quite close to him.
• This can also show us that she came and talked to Lennie because she felt lonely and had no one to talk to her therefore we can tell that her life must have been isolated because she had no one to talk to. • This also shows us that her husband must have been busy with
friends and he is more happy with friends rather than his wife which means that she isn’t truly loved by her husband because he doesn’t stay with her.
• Steinbeck wants us to feel sorry for her at the end of the book when she dies.
• “She was very pretty and simple, and her face was sweet and young”
• This shows us that she is seen as being sweet and innocent in death –her natural beauty is allowed to shine through.
• This highlights the fact that it was her negative life
experience that made her act in the way that she did. This can also show us that Steinbeck wants the reader to go l on a rollercoaster (like her, hate her, like her) which makes the book more interesting to read.
• By using the words sweet and young to describe her it also makes us feel sorry for her because it shows that she is
’Another time I met a guy, and he was in pictures, went out to the Riverside Dance Palace with him, he says he was gonna put me in the movies, soon as he got back to Hollywood he was going to write to me about it.’’
This shows that she wanted to be an actress, but couldn’t fulfil her dreams as in America in 1930’s women were not treated equally and had no rights. They were seen as
below men and did not have a say in what’s right and
wrong. This man used her and made promises to her that he was never going to keep.
Because he let her down and she didn’t get what she wanted she married Curley who also treated her badly. He didn’t love her, didn’t talk to her and it is implied that he hit her too.
Her life really hasn’t ended up the way she expected it to, which is another reason why we should feel sorry for her.
• Curley’s Wife is the only female on the ranch and in the book.‘’Why can’t I talk to you? I never get to talk to
anybody, I get awful lonely.’’ This shows us that she has no female friends or any friends at all. She has no one to share her problems/thoughts with and this could make her feel isolated from the rest of the ranch.
• This lack of someone to talk to drives her to go to Lennie and talk to him. When she does she realizes who’s good and bad. She finally confides in someone and the one person that she thinks she can trust/talk to is the person that ends up killing her.. We should therefore feel sorry for her.
Other reasons
Other reasons
• She has no name; she is a possession. We should feel sorry for her because she doesn’t exist in her own right. No-one sees her as a person and Steinbeck didn’t want the reader to either; hence no name.
• She’s stereotyped by everyone else as a sexual predator and can’t justify herself or her beahviour due to the fact she’s a woman and no one can see past this.
• She died because she was enjoying having someone to talk to and someone to pay attention to her, which
Her behaviour is inappropriate
Her behaviour is inappropriate
• We should dislike her in the book because she
behaves inappropriately for a woman, a wife, on
a ranch of men. She is always looking for
someone to talk to when she should be at home
being Curley’s wife.
• Her flirting with all the men often gets them in
trouble. She is a dangerous person and can
Her behaviour is inappropriate
Her behaviour is inappropriate
• Her inappropriate flirting ultimately ends in her
death. She lets Lennie feel her hair and then she
screams and he breaks her neck because he
didn’t know his own strength. This caused Lennie
to be killed later on in the book which brings to an
end George, Lennie and Candy's dream – this is
Curley’s Wife’s fault.
• She is quite promiscuous/flirtatious in her
behaviour, trying to make the men notice her.
Her dress is inappropriate
Her dress is inappropriate
• She dresses inappropriately for a woman on a
ranch. She should be in dungarees and welly
boots, but instead she is in a “cotton dress, red
mules with ostrich feathers.” She is “heavily
She is a mean person
She is a mean person
• In chapter 4 Curley’s Wife shows how mean she
is when she picks on Crooks. When he tells her to
leave his room, she tells him that “she could get
him strung up so quick it ain’t even funny.’
Threatening to get someone killed isn’t very nice,
especially when they haven’t done anything to
deserve it. She is using her power of being a
white woman over Crooks but in a very mean
way.
• She blames her mum for the “pitchers’ man never
contacting her; even though it isn’t her mum’s
She causes her own trouble
She causes her own trouble
• Everything that happens to Curley’s Wife is because she brings it on herself and she therefore doesn’t deserve our sympathy.
• The man that she meets at the Riverside Dance Palace never contacts her and she blames it on her mum. The
next night she meets Curley and she marries him. This is a rash and foolish action and one that is bound to go wrong. You don’t marry someone you hardly know, and certainly not to a) get back at your mum and b) if you’re on the
rebound.
All the men on the ranch dislike her –
All the men on the ranch dislike her –
and they can
and they can
’
’
t all be wrong…
t all be wrong…
• Curley’s Wife is described by many of the men on the ranch in a very negative way.
• “Looloo” • “Jailbait” • “Poison”
• “Well I think Culey’s married a … tart’
• “She’s got the eye. I seen her give Slim the eye.”
• The fact that they all describe her like this – and that
George is instantly alarmed by her and tells Lennie to stay away from her – shows that she must be a character to dislike because they can’t all be wrong.
