How Does Steinbeck Present Curley Pugnacious

’
Steinbeck uses quite descriptive vocabulary to describe Curley as an individual and links this to the way other characters react to him. Furthermore, he says “His glance was at once calculating and pugnacious”. This is a strong indicator in suggesting that Curley is quite an aggressive character as he describes him as pugnacious. The word ‘pugnacious’ itself is quite unusual and yet it solidifies the suspicions of what the audience think of Curley (him being a character always wanting a fight), as it isn’t really an open word in the sense it has no double meaning and isn’t really used in any different context and you as the audience see it as unusual but it is literally there as a denotation of Curley’s character. In addition to this, I can also infer that he is quite conniving because Steinbeck uses the word ‘calculating’. This makes me insinuate that he is clever to choose his battles to ensure that he will win. Moreover this in itself tells me that Curley isn’t as tough as he makes out and makes me think that he uses his fights as an excuse to emphasise his masculinity just to exert this fear among his peers and be seen as this dominant alpha male. But he himself is just insecure and really he wants to be like slim; this is evident from his encounter with slim later in the story when he is
He says “There was a gravity in his manner and a quiet so profound that all talk stopped when he spoke…his ear heard more than was said to him”. Furthermore, in the full entirety of Steinbeck’s description of Slim he repeatedly emphasises these almost unbelievable attributes about him. He does this in such a way it has the effect on the audience of thinking as Slim as this superior human to all the others and it is explicit to us he is the antithesis of