OF MICE AND MEN
SLIM
Although really only a minor character, Slim plays an important part as a bridge
between all the different characters.
‘A tall man stood in the doorway…he moved into the room and he moved with a
majesty only achieved by royalty and master craftsmen. He was a jerk-line skinner,
the prince of the ranch…’
The ‘jerk-line’ is the rein that runs from front to back on a team of working mules.
The jerk-line skinner is the man who sits at the back and operates the jerk-line. He
is in charge of the team.
It is a skilled job and the person carrying it out would be well respected by the
other ranch-hands.
The vocabulary used to describe Slim in the early part of the introduction contains
many references to royalty. It is an indication of the awe felt by the other workers
for Slim. It is more than just being a skilled handler of horses – there is something
almost reverential in the way Steinbeck writes about him. He has the sort of quiet
authority that the men respond to. He is in stark contrast to the attention-seeking
and brutal Curley.
Steinbeck uses the character of Slim in an interesting way to make a point about
the nobility of an honest day’s work and the true nature of self-worth. He also
points out that even skilled men like Slim were not immune to the consequences of
the depression.
Slim is different to the other men in that he has a particular skill and is paid to use
it on the ranch. He is not just another manual worker who moves about but a
leader of the other men. He lives along- side them, eats the same food as them and
sleeps in the same bunk-house; yet he is the man in charge. The reader may question
whether Slim should have had his own room at least. This was something that
Steinbeck omitted deliberately. He used Slim to demonstrate to the reader that
self-respect, pride and authority come from doing a good job, no matter what that
job is. If Slim was the swamper he would have been the best swamper he could be.
Steinbeck felt that there was nobility to be found in doing the best job possible,
whatever that job might be and uses noble language in his description of Slim
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deliberately. This is in stark contrast to the portrayal of Curley who demands
respect by being a bully and a thug.
‘There was a gravity in his manner and a quiet so profound that all talk stopped
when he spoke. His authority was so great that his word was taken on any subject,
be it politics or love’.
‘His hatchet face was ageless’.
‘His ear heard more than was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones, not of
thought, but of understanding beyond thought.’
This is demonstrated later in the novel when Slim sums up the lives if the itinerant
workers:
‘Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other’
This is the reason he comes up with for so many men travelling alone and not
creating frienships. He makes intelligent points about the wider world in the novel
that obviously reflect Steinbeck’s thoughts and experiences – in this way Slim helps
to keep the novel grounded in reality.
‘His hands, large and lean, were as delicate as those of a temple-dancer.’
Hands are a motif in the novel. Lennie’s hands are like a bears paws; Curley’s one
hand is crushed and the other is kept in a glove of Vaseline. Candy has lost his
hand;
In all it is the longest introduction given to any of the characters. However it sums
up all Steinbeck has to say about Slim – anything else we learn about him later simply
serves to reinforce what is written in the introduction.
Slim’s judgement of people extends to his understanding of George and Lennie
travelling around together. He understands Lennie particularly:
‘He’s a nice fella. Guy don’t need no sense to be a nice fella. Seems to me sometimes
it jus’ works the other way round’
Slim is understanding, gentle and sensitive but also has a tough side where
necessary. He drowns four out of the pups that his dog gives birth to so he shows
no signs of sentimentality about animals. Yet he is kind to Lennie and gives him
another of the pups.
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When Curley irritates Slim by constantly asking where his wife is an implying that
Slim is really friendly to her he rounds on him despite the fact that he’s the bosses
son:
‘If you can’t look after your own God-damn wife, what you expect me to do about
it? You lay offa me’
The men look to him for advice – Candy looks at him when Carlson is taking the dog
out to be shot, hoping that Slim will give it a reprieve; again he shows no
sentimentality and allows Carlson to shoot the dog because he knows it’s the right
thing to do.
Similarly in the end he knows that it’s the right decision for George to shoot Lennie
– he also understands the huge personal cost of this to George. It is Slim who
makes up the other half of the pair seen walking off at the end of the novel – this
mirrors the arrival of two men at the beginning:
‘He led George into the entrance of the trail and up toward the highway’
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