Chapter Five is filled with characters whose thoughts can be described very precisely: Lennie's fear, Curley wife's musings and then her terror, George's stoic acceptance, Curley's meanness, and Candy's despondency. All occur because of the meeting in the barn between Lennie and Curley's wife, a meeting that seals forever the fates of all involved.
Lennie's fate is sealed when he realizes he has done a worse thing than kill a pup. His panic in killing Curley's wife is much like the panic he felt when Curley baited him and Lennie broke Curley's hand. Lennie differentiates at some level between the bad thing of killing the pup and the bad thing of killing Curley's wife, as evidenced by his leaving for the bushes near the river when he realizes she is dead. However, he doesn't fully comprehend the implications of her death, as evidenced by his taking the pup's body with him so that George wouldn't see it as well. Lennie's reasoning is that the body of Curley's wife is bad enough; the body of the pup would compound the wrong done. This action — and the thought process that preceded it — reemphasizes Lennie's child-like understanding of the events that have transpired.
Throughout the novel, Steinbeck describes Curley's wife in terms of her appearance and the reactions of the ranch hands toward her. She has been alternately a "tart," "jailbait," and various other derogatory terms, used often by George. But in this scene, the reader gets a different view of her as she talks about her own lost dreams. Her current situation is the result of a series of bad choices and unhappy circumstance. She lost her chance at being in the movies because of her age and her mother, and, perhaps in retaliation, she took up with Curley, leading to a loveless marriage with a man who abuses her and completes her feelings of worthlessness. She lives a solitary life on a ranch, with no companion, no one to talk to, and in continual fear that her husband will beat up any person in sight. Although her actions and flirtations have exacerbated the unhappiness of her situation, Steinbeck gives us a view of her past, and we discover that she, like everyone else in the novel — and perhaps even more so — is a victim of loneliness.
