Ms. Hillary
American Lit
24 June 2015
Of Mice and Men
“Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend”-Albert Camus .In the novel Of Mice and Men written by John Steinbeck, explores the elements of true friendship. Friendship is a very important theme in the novel, and Steinbeck does a mesmerizing job of portraying that you always need to be there for one another.
The main characters George and Lennie have a brotherly bond for each other. For example Lennie and George may often argue but no matter what obstacles they face they need each other. George would not get jobs without Lennie because of his physical strength, and vice versa Lennie wouldn’t be …show more content…
Crooks, Candy, and Curly’s wife were very lonely and isolated throughout the novel. Curly’s wife represented the absence of friendship in the novel to me because she was the only woman on the ranch and has no one who will talk to her, even her husband. Her gender isolates her from the other characters. Absence of friendship due to lack of female characters were the cause of her attempts to engage the attention of the men on the ranch, but only served to push them further away from her. She has already given up on her dreams, of a better life, as a movie star and appears to hang all her hopes on any man who will listen to her. Candy is isolated after the loss of his hand he is unable to work with the other men and is reduced to the role of swamper. Once his dog has been shot Candy has little else to live for and is desperately lonely. "You seen what they done to my dog tonight? They says he wasn’t no good to himself nor nobody else. When they can me here I wisht somebody’d shoot me. But they won’t do nothing like that. I won’t have no place to go, an’ I can’t get no more jobs”(Steinbeck, 60). He is powerless and afraid of the future. He is just alone all day, and never goes into town nor have conversations with the other men. Crooks is isolated because of his race. He is physically separated from the other men and has his own room in the barn. His crooked back means that like candy he has limited social or work contact with the other men as he tends the horses. His loneliness forces him to be mean when Lennie tries to talk to