Loneliness In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

Loneliness is an issue that is starting to affect more and more people daily. In a TIME article, it states, “Loneliness kills. That’s the conclusion of a new study by Brigham Young University researchers who say they are sounding the alarm on what could be the next big public-health issue, on par with obesity and substance abuse” (Worland 1). With loneliness beginning to be discussed more frequently, more writers are basing their works on the topic. In the novel Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck bases many of the events that occur around loneliness. Steinbeck uses multiple characters from the novel to portray the different ways that loneliness can affect people and how they handle being lonely.
Curley’s wife is a character that Steinbeck …show more content…
With doing research on the different forms of loneliness and reading about what type of loneliness certain people are dealing with, it allowed me to come to the conclusion that Curley’s wife was facing a form of loneliness called “social loneliness”. Social loneliness is when a person is excluded from a group, is in a group but is put behind everyone else, or is actively rejected. The ranchers could all be looked at as one huge group, and that is the group that she was excluded from. To a certain extent, she was actively rejected from that group of people. Curley didn’t want her talking to them and the men didn’t want to get involved with her. They didn’t want any problems with Curley so they constantly told her that they can’t talk to her or be around her. Sometimes you can take the reigns on your form of loneliness and control why you may be lonely, but in Curley’s wife’s case, she wasn’t able to control whether she was lonely or not. All she wanted was a friend, or someone to talk to once in awhile so she wasn’t cooped up in their house all the time, and all that she got out of trying to be friendly and have a somewhat sociable life was her