Theme Of Loneliness In Of Mice And Men

All human beings exhibit moments of loneliness in life, but one’s inability to move onward from the sad, empty, feeling causes certain individuals to often experience long-term isolation and seclusion. Measuring the loneliness of a living being is rather difficult at times, because some over exaggerate the way they feel while others keep all their powerful feelings trapped inside a sea of bottled emotions. However, through inference, it is possible to see past the veneer that coats an individual, and see what is inside his or her heart. In the tragic novella, Of Mice and Men, author John Steinbeck heavily dabbles with concepts of loneliness, using the characters in his story to transmit his thoughts to the reader. In the book, George and Lennie, …show more content…
One of the first traits worth noting of Crooks is his skin color. When talking about Crooks, Candy says, “Sure. Ya see the stable buck’s a nigger” (20). By the wording that Candy uses to describe Crooks, it can be inferred that Crooks is the only black man on the ranch. Being the only black man on the ranch, Crooks feels alienated from the other men. Similar to Candy, Crooks is the “odd man out” because he differs from others in a certain way. However, it does not take inference to determine that Crooks is all alone being the only black man. When Lennie asks if he can come into Crooks’ bunk room, Crooks responds by saying, “You go get outta my room. I ain’t wanted in the bunk house, and you ain’t wanted in my room” (68). In that line alone, it shows the loneliness Crooks feels, unable to mingle with the other men, and in response he takes his anger out on Lennie. On a more minor note, another potential reason on why Crooks is lonely is due to his crooked back. Candy describes him by saying, “Yeah. Nice fella too. Got a crooked back where a horse kicked him. The boss gives him hell when he’s mad. But the stable buck don’t give a damn about that. He reads a lot. Got books in his room” (20). Taking a look at the words Candy uses, it seems that the boss sometimes mistreats Crooks because, aside from being black, he also has …show more content…
Arguably, she is the loneliest character in the entire novel. “George looked around at Lennie. ‘Jesus, what a tramp,’ he said. ‘So that’s what Curley picks for as a wife’” (32). First of all, Curley’s wife is the only woman shown throughout the entire novella, which makes the reader able to deduce that she is the only woman on the ranch. That piece of information itself already proves she is possibly a little lonely, being different from others. However, the main source of her loneliness is not sexism, but by how the other men see her. George’s opinion on her sums up what the other men on the ranch think of her as well, which means that the men on the ranch, besides Curley of course, don’t think very highly of her, which can be seen above as George calls her a tramp. Because of what the men think of her, most of them want nothing to do with her, which increases her isolation from others, leaving Curley as the only one she can talk to. Through most of the book, her loneliness is unapparent. However, her character unravels near the end of Of Mice and Men. Right before her death at the hands of Lennie, Curley’s wife has an enormous heart-to-heart conversation with Lennie, making any of the evidence pointing to her loneliness that happens before this almost unimportant. “ ‘I get lonely,’ she said. ‘You can talk to people, but I can’t talk to nobody but Curley. Else he gets mad. How’d you like not to