Loneliness In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

The biggest disease known to mankind is loneliness. Many characters in Of Mice and Men have been desensitized to loneliness because they live on a farm, in a little town named Soledad, and are used to being isolated. In the novel, John Steinbeck uses his characters to portray a theme of lonesomeness and what can happen as a result. Much of the isolationism in Of Mice and Men is evident through the characters. Crooks, a stable buck on Curley’s farm, lives in his own room and gets treated differently from the others because of his skin color. Crooks has gone “nuts [since] he ain’t got nobody” and has been separated from the others ever since his arrival (Steinbeck 72). Isolationism makes people go mad. Everyone needs somebody, and the lack of company for that length of time can make the characters grumpy and stir crazy. According to Jayne M. Blanchard, “Crooks is further incapacitated by bitterness stemming from racist treatment by the other guys” (Blanchard). Although Crooks is

The emotional strain, among the men, due to the isolationism is exceptionally high in Soledad, which makes fighting there a regular occurrence. These men are so different and detached from society that they do not know how to interact with each other like normal, civilized men. According to Joanna Horowitz, “the cross section of backgrounds ratcheted up tension as the farm became its own microcosm of the American melting pot” (Horowitz). Like America, with many the different personality types put together onto one farm, there is bound to be people who do not get along. Especially with all the tensions from the men, fighting is