Loneliness In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

In the novella Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, loneliness is a key theme to the novella. Curley’s wife, Crooks, and Candy are affected the most by their loneliness. Steinbeck creates the novella in a setting where most of the characters are isolated from the outside world and other people. Crooks is kept in a separate barn because he is black. Curley’s wife is unable to talk to other people on the ranch because Curley had forbidden it. Candy, with the death of his dog, becomes very sad and isolated without his best friend, his dog. The three most affected characters by loneliness are Curley’s wife, Crooks, and Candy. They are all lonely because they have all faced tragedy. Loneliness causes the characters to have emotional differences from the rest of the people in the novella. Their way of life is altered because of the isolation they face.

Curley’s wife is lonely through the novella because she is the only woman on the ranch, she can’t talk to anyone else on the

Because Crooks is isolated he is not friendly or willing to make friends. Crooks wants to be alone in his room. In the book there is a description of his room, “...Had his bunk in the harness room; a little shed that leaned off the wall of the barn.”(66) We learn that Crooks is isolated from other people on the farm from the description of his room. He is still required to do the same work he isn’t allowed and he doesn’t want to interact with anyone. He is mad that he can’t go into the bunk room so he feels no one should be able to go into his room. He gets fussy when Lennie comes to visit him. “You got no right to come in my room. This here’s my room. Nobody got any right in here but me.”(68) Crooks is obviously upset that there is a white person in his room. He feels that all whites are bad because most of them are racist. All Lennie wants is to make new friends and tell Crooks about George and his