Quote Detail

Curley enters the bunkhouse looking for his wife and, finding Lennie smiling while thinking about the dream farm, immediately targets him. The simile comparing Curley to a terrier establishes the predatory dynamic.

The terrier simile compresses Curley's entire psychology into a single image: small, aggressive, bred to attack larger prey. Steinbeck positions the verb 'stepped over' to suggest territorial violation before the dialogue even begins, so that the question 'What the hell you laughin' at?' arrives as confirmation rather than cause of violence. The contraction 'laughin'' preserves the vernacular register while the hell-curse signals Curley's need to manufacture offense where none exists, framing the fight as inevitable once a weaker target appears vulnerable.

Use to argue that Steinbeck codes violence as instinctive rather than rational—the terrier simile naturalizes Curley's aggression as breed behavior, removing moral agency from the attack.