John Steinbeck Loneliness

Of Mice and Men is the novella John Steinbeck created to portray the major theme of loneliness. Steinbeck created two different characters who long for attention, but their appearance outcast themselves from the rest guys. Curley’s wife is the only female living on the ranch and Crooks is the only black person working on the ranch. John Steinbeck developed two characters who have different views of what loneliness is. Curley's wife feels neglected every day because she is the only girl on the ranch. Crooks is the only black man on the ranch and the white people can easily ostracize him. Even though the value of loneliness is different from the two, they both want the workers to find out they exist. The social life isolated the two because …show more content…
“Nobody gets heaven, and nobody gets no land.”(Steinbeck 64 ) To Crooks equality does not exist or having a better life. We can tell from this quote he was accepted by the white people when he was little until his innocent goes away and he starts to understand how cruel the society is. Over the years, he learned to deal with living alone and having no one to talk to. He knows that opening up to others can lead to untrustworthy promises. Crooks is physically separated from the other men. The white workers like to go out of town together, leaving Crooks by himself in the barn.“S’pose you didn’t have nobody. S’pose you couldn’t go into the bunk house and play rummy ‘cause you was black. How’d you like that?” (Steinbeck 72) Crooks is the only black man working on the ranch. He acts like the black sheep because many of the white ranch workers do not bother to go near him. He knows that being black can just lead to severe consequences. If he does not do his work, then his boss will beat him hard. Crooks tries his best to stay out of people's business so he won't get in trouble. When Lennie came over his loneliness starts to disappear when he accepted Lennie to talk to him. However, Crooks senses came back and he withdrew his decision of being a part of Lennie and George’s dream after Curley’s wife threatened him. His fears about how others treat him returns and he is not able to see past all the prejudice acts, …show more content…
Throughout the book, Steinbeck portrayed emotional settings that captured the prejudice acts for Crooks and Curley’s wife. Hope is a word that will never come upon the two characters because they were left alone for being a girl, a different race, and they tried to find ways to end their loneliness but failed. Crooks realized he could no longer live a happy life because of the racial discrimination. Curley’s wife was a tramp looking for attention, but in the end, we can see that she was unhappy about her life. When she tells Lennie about her dreams, it shows us how loneliness can easily destroy her. Although they are both very different characters, that share a different aspect of the social life on the ranch. We learned that John Steinbeck made this book teach us that no matter what race or sex you are, you need a friend help end your sufferings from being