There is but a small percentage of Moes in any given population: perhaps 5%. There are even fewer Curlys. The vast bulk of humanity are Larrys.
(Though represented by male characters, the three types also apply to women.)
Moe is the active personality, and if not always dominant, always striving to be. Moe is the one who spurs the others into action. He devises plans to better their lot, but when his plans fail the other two suffer the consequences. But is Moe any less the fool for that they follow his plans?
He is a natural manipulator, only partially because the others are waiting to be manipulated. He would want to manipulate them anyway, even if they weren’t so willing.
But Larry is a born follower, a blank slate that only reacts (and slowly at that) to exterior stimuli. He never initiates action. He is Moe’s absolute tool, the truest ‘stooge.’ When Moe’s abuse finally does make him angry, he lashes out not at Moe, but at Curly. No matter how he suffers under Moe’s yoke, he never really rebels. He argues, but gives up easily.
Were it not for the presence of his friends, Larry probably would live in peace – a dull, flat, mechanical peace. Though clumsy, he is still the most employable of the three – for the other two are incapable of following orders, although for different reasons. Most people are Larrys.
Larrys divide people into those who don’t divide others into two types, and those who do. But they do so only because they grew up hearing it.
Curly is the only likeable one, a truly rare human model. He is the holy man, the Divine Fool. He is as creative and active as Moe, but it is a spontaneous and joyous kind of creativity, no good for the kind of plotting and scheming required by a Moe-dominated society. He is a free spirit, but correspondingly unable to function well in a world of Moes and Larrys. He, like Larry, is perpetually abused, but he intuitively understands what is happening to him and reacts far more angrily – if equally ineffectually. He is everyone’s favorite Stooge because he is the funniest; through his inate nobility and natural humility he constantly bests Moe, but it is in an unconscious way, and it is only apparent to the outside observer. Curly himself is hardly aware of his talents; his weakness is that he does not know his own strength, and cannot trust his own luck.
In real life, Curlys are usually branded by the Moes and Larrys around them as retarded, schizophrenic, mal-adjusted or just plain stupid, whereas in reality, it is only Curly who understands the truth. Remaining cheerful through adversity, he wins battles not by fighting, but by ‘accidentally’ unleashing ‘accidents’ in which his enemies injure themselves.
Alien to feelings of avarice or ambition, he is the opposite of Moe, yet the two are drawn together by some inexplicable balancing force of nature. The Larrys, though, are ever the in-betweeners, sluglike nonentities caught in the crossfire of cosmic dualities – yet remaining there by some herding instinct that makes being a casualty of the Moe-Curly battle preferable to life alone with other Larrys.