John Steinbeck 's Of Mice And Men Essay

“Ain’t many guys travel around together,” he mused. “I don’t know why. Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other” (35). Throughout the course of Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck takes readers on a journey encompassing the importance of belonging versus isolation, where friendship is a foreign word and loneliness proves to be inescapable. The story follows two migrant workers, George Milton and Lennie Small, the protagonists, and their life working on a farm, all the while struggling to be accepted by the ranch workers and at what price they must pay for it. In deeper analysis, readers will find that this problem is even present within the ranch workers themselves, and more specifically from the disempowered character that is Crooks. Of Mice and Men is set during the 1930’s, a time where racial prejudice is still considered to be justifiable, leaving Crooks, the only Negro stable-buck on the ranch, to be immensely isolated from the other workers Virtually every aspect of his life, detailing down to even where he sleeps, is dictated because of his color. Upon his introduction, Crooks is said to have “his bunk in the harness room; a little shed that leaned off the wall of the barn” (66). Crooks is cut off from the rest of the ranch workers. He is not allowed to bunk with the other men, for they claim he stinks, but Crooks knows it has more to do with his race. Most of the ranch workers tend to look down upon and exclude Crooks at all times. The men,…