The document provides information about the character of Slim in Of Mice and Men. It discusses Slim's role as the skilled jerkline skinner who has authority and respect on the ranch. Slim is depicted as a calm, stable figure who observes others and helps to resolve conflicts. As an archetype, Slim represents traditional agricultural values that were disappearing during the Great Depression era.

1. The characterisation of Slim
L.O To understand the main
Aos for the Unit 1 exam and
revise the character of Slim.
OF MICE AND MEN

2. WJEC English Literature Unit 1, Section
A:
Prose (different cultures)
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• Assessment Objectives
• AO1
• Respond to texts critically and imaginatively; select and evaluate
relevant textual detail to illustrate and support interpretations
• AO2
• Explain how language, structure and form contribute to writers’
presentation of ideas, themes and settings
• AO4
• Relate texts to their social, cultural and historical contexts;
explain how texts have been influential and significant to self and
other readers in different contexts and at different times

3. • You have to answer two questions on the play.
• Part (a) is based on a short extract and will be marked out
of ten using AO1 and AO2.
• For part (b) OR part (c) you will have to write an essay on
the novella.
• You will have a choice of two essay titles. Your essay will be
marked out of twenty using AO1 and AO4.
• You are NOT allowed to take copies of the play into the
examination.
• You will have one hour to complete both of your answers on
Of Mice and Men. (Don’t forget, this is just one section of
a two-hour exam.)
• You should spend about 20 minutes on part (a) and about 40
minutes on part (b) OR part (c).

4. WJEC Question Mark / AO1 AO2 AO3 AO4
Unit 1,
Section
A
a) / 10 5 5
b) OR c) / 20 7 13
•A notional indication of how the marks are allocated across the Assessment
Objectives can be found in the table below.
•In practice, however, examiners will give an overall mark based on appropriate
coverage of each Assessment Objective.

5. Slim is above the other workers on the ranch
• Not just a hired labourer, but a craftsman; the jerkline
skinner (lead mule-team driver) at the ranch. He is excellent
at his job.
• He has an almost god-like status is “the prince of the ranch”
and he is regarded as an authority. We know little else about
him, which gives him a slightly mysterious quality. ‘George
looked over at Slim and saw the calm, Godlike eyes fastened
on him.’
• He has a quiet dignity: he doesn't need to assert himself to
have authority.
• "there was a gravity in his manner and a quiet so profound
that all talked stopped when he spoke. His authority was so
great that his word was taken on any subject, be it politics
or love."

6. He is a figure of stability and calmness:
For most of the novel he is a detached figure who observes
Lennie's and George's relationship. At one point he is called to
make a judgment, when he decides that Candy's dog should be
shot. ‘Candy looked helplessly at him, for Slim’s opinions were
law’
He is used as a narrative device by Steinbeck
By listening to George in the ranch house, Slim allows him to
reveal a great deal about his relations with Lennie, and to
describe incidents from their past.
He understands the relationship between George and Lennie.
He helps George at the end and reassures George that he did
the right thing.

7. His first appearance – in Part 2
A tall man stood in the doorway. He held a crushed Stetson hat under
his arm while he combed his long, black, damp hair straight back. Like
the others he wore blue jeans and a short denim jacket. When he had
finished combing his hair he moved into the room, and he moved with a
majesty achieved only by royalty and master craftsmen. He was a
jerkline skinner, the prince of the ranch, capable of driving ten,
sixteen, even twenty mules with a single line to the leaders. He was
capable of killing a fly on the wheeler’s butt with a bull whip without
touching the mule. 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.
This was Slim, the jerkline skinner. His hatchet face was ageless. He
might have been thirty-five or fifty. His ear heard more than was said
to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of
understanding beyond thought. His hands, large and lean, were as
delicate in their action as those of a temple dancer.
He smoothed out his crushed hat, creased it in the middle and put it
on. He looked kindly at the two in the bunk house.

8. What this tells us…
• The romanticised description is used by Steinbeck
to build the image of an ideal – he represents the
‘master craftsman’ a breed that was rapidly dying
out in the west due to the advance of agricultural
machinery.
• He remains distant from the other characters and
we learn very little about him and his hopes: ‘His
hatchet face was ageless. He might have been
thirty-five or fifty. His ear heard more than was
said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not
of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.’
• His agelessness and the lack of solid information
about him shows he is an archetype rather than a
real character.

9. Authority
• He is seen as ‘royalty’ ‘the prince of the ranch’ and the
others look up to him with unquestioning awe. Yet he is
godlike in his power – only on occasions when there is no
option does he wield it.
 In the scene before Candy’s dog is killed (he decides it
should die; linking to godlike status, he can decide who
dies)
 After the fight – he silences Curly.
 He tries to help George protect Lennie from Curley
after he has killed Curley’s wife.

10. Kindness
• He shows a mildness and affinity with animals that is
described with admiration ‘He was capable of killing a
fly on the wheeler’s butt with a bull whip without
touching the mule.’ ‘Crooks said. “Maybe Slim. Slim
comes in sometimes two, three times a night. Slim’s a
real skinner. He looks out for his team.”
• Slim treats other characters with respect ‘He looked
kindly at the two in the bunk house’ and is one of the
few characters who shows respect to Crooks.

11. Symbols ‘hands’
• Hands are an important symbol in the novel they
represent the workers power and can cause destruction.
• Candy’s missing hand is a symbol of his uselessness.
Curley, who had previously taken care of his hand with
the ‘glove fulla’ vaseline’, loses the use of his hand in the
fight with Lennie. It is at this point that he is unable to
take control and it is Slim who control’s the situation
after the fight.
• ‘His hands, large and lean, were as delicate in their
action as those of a temple dancer’ Slim’s powerful yet
‘delicate’ hands symbolise his importance on the ranch.

12. Sample responses on the character:
Extract question

15. Wisdom
• ‘Slim looked through George and beyond him’ suggests he
has a vision which the other characters lack.
• ‘Slim stood up slowly and with dignity.’
• Slim reached up over the card table and turned on the tin-
shaded electric light. Instantly the table was brilliant with
light, and the cone of the shade threw its brightness
straight downward, leaving the corners of the bunk house
still in dusk.’ Light is a symbol of hope in the novella –
Curley’s wife cuts out the light…

16. “I seen her give
Slim the eye. Slim’s
a jerkline skinner.
Hell of a nice fella.
Slim don’t need to
wear no high-heeled
boots on a grain
team.”
“Hi, Slim,” she said.
Slim’s voice came through the door. “Hi, Good-lookin’.”
“I’m tryin’ to find Curley, Slim.”
“Well, you ain’t tryin’ very hard. I seen him goin’ in your house.”
She was suddenly apprehensive. “’Bye, boys,” she called into the bunk
house, and she hurried away.’
“George fell silent. He wanted to talk.
Slim neither encouraged nor discouraged
him. He just sat back quiet and
receptive.” – His nature encourages others
to trust and confide in him.

17. Context and Slim
During the American depression workers with a steady job
were rare. Slim represents a dying breed.
He has been unaffected by the Great Depression as he keeps
a steady job – however he is alone, and has no family to speak
of. Like the other workers his only contact with women is
when he visits the ‘flophouse’ in town. He seems to share
their low opinion of women although he is one of the few men
who treats Curley’s wife with anything other than fear.

18. context
• Steinbeck admired many of the particular ‘community’
qualities inherent in the ‘old ways’ of cowboy ranch life – he
came from Soledad himself and had seen it at first hand; by
the mid-1930s however, he saw that this traditional way of
life was being warped and threatened by what he perceived to
be the increasing greed for profit of the farm owners
(capitalism – where costs are reduced to a minimum, and
profits are maximised), by the influx of cheap labour created
by the Great Depression and the Great Dust Bowl, and by the
increasing mechanisation of farm work.
• The characters in the story form a kind of moral hierarchy
both directly and indirectly.
• Slim represents this idealised American cowboy – he
is a fixture on the ranch and his agricultural

19. Slim embodies the good qualities of an
agricultural way of life
• Steinbeck felt that many of the enduring good qualities in
the old agricultural way of life were still apparent,
qualities of behaviour that relied on modes of ritual shown
through particular courtesies, acts of playfulness, games,
the devoted enjoyment of natural processes, an admiring
concern for sexuality, a pattern of warm-hearted
appreciation of goodness that is completely outside of any
concern for property or wealth.

20. • Such ritualistic descriptions within the novel (‘setting down’ to talk
together, the sharing of food and drink, the game of horse shoes,
and so on) act as a kind of ‘symbolic shorthand’ to help the careful
reader understand a character, his actions and ways of thinking
and living more fully. Steinbeck believed strongly in the influence
of myth and archetype (Carl Jung, the eminent 20 century
psychoanalyst, developed and proposed these ideas - that certain
all-pervading human thought patterns and ways of behaviour were
universal and ancient in origin. It was as if such ways of thinking
emanated from a kind of ‘universal genetic pool of thought’. Jung
termed this, mankind’s ‘collective unconscious’. Such archetypes
create particular patterns of thought and have their origin in
ancient myths, stories and legends: stories of good versus evil, of
the brave warrior, the evil dragon, the wicked witch, the
temptress, the happy family, and so on). Steinbeck felt that such
universally held ideas were important to the way humanity behaved
and he incorporated some of these ideas within this simple story
because he knew the power they have on readers of all ages.

21. Themes and Slim
• The American Dream – Slim is one of the few characters
without an obvious dream, his distance from such follies
could link to Steinbeck’s own view of the distructive nature
of these dreams.
• Nature and survival of the fittest - Slim linked to nature
and is one of the few characters who has no physical or
mental scarring at the end of the novella: Did the fittest
survive?
• Power and powerlessness – Slim’s power comes from his skill
on the ranch which places him towards the top of the
hierarchy and gives him respect from all other characters,
even those above him such as Curley and The Boss.