Who Is Crooks The Loneliest Character In Of Mice And Men

How would you feel if you were completely cast out and ignored, not being able to talk to anyone? John Steinbeck, who wrote Of Mice and Men writes about many characters who feel a similar feeling of complete aloneness. Out of the decent amount of characters in Of Mice and Men who generally feel alone, Crooks stands out as the most forlorn. Crooks is the loneliest character in Of Mice and Men because he is mostly isolated from his co-workers, and he is discriminated against because of his race, which is african-american.
Crooks is definitely the loneliest character in Of Mice and Men because he is almost completely isolated from his co-workers, and only gets one day per year to hang out in the living quarters with the other workers. Crooks says, in chapter 4, "You got no right to come in my room. This here's my room.

Nobody got any right in here but me.” Being isolated from his co-workers, Crooks has grown cold, and even unwilling to make a friend, or even talk to people for a ‘long’ period of time. Being around people is definitely crucial to one’s mental health, and it seems Crooks hasn’t been doing that so much. Crooks mainly expresses his loneliness on page 80, where he says, "S'pose you didn't have nobody. “S'pose you couldn't go into the bunk house and play rummy 'cause you was black. How'd you like that? S'pose you had to sit out here an' read books. Sure you could play horseshoes till it got dark, but then you got to read books. Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody-to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick.” These two pieces of evidence from Of Mice and Men definitely show that Crooks is the loneliest character in Of Mice and Men.
Not only is Crooks the loneliest character in Of Mice and Men because he is isolated from his co-workers, but also because he is constantly discriminated against because of his skin color, which is black.

Crooks has been discriminated because of his skin color his whole life, starting when he was a child, living at a farm with his father, and after he reveals his past, he says on page 37, "There wasn’t another colored family for miles around. And now there ain’t a colored man on this ranch an’ there’s jus’ one family in Soledad." When he says that, you could really tell how lonely he and/or his family was, being that people who were of color were already so hated, and his family was the only one. A couple pages later on page 39, he says “This is just a nigger talkin', an' a busted-back nigger. So it don't mean nothing, see?” What Crooks meant when he said that is that being a ‘nigger’ in that time meant that you had no voice, your words meant nothing to white people. This is why Crooks is the loneliest character in Of Mice and Men; because he is constantly being judged based on his skin color, causing most people to rarely interact with

him.
Some might say that Crooks gets enough attention, having a couple characters go in and out of his small shambled house every once and awhile. Well, they would be wrong. Crooks barely sees anyone most of the year, even candy says on pages 77-78, "I been here a long time," he said. "An' Crooks been here a long time. This's the first time I ever been in his room." Then Crooks says darkly, "Guys don't come into a colored man's room very much." Even though Candy has been around the ranch for around the same amount of time as Crooks, he had never even been into his house until Lennie wandered in. This is definitely proof that he doesn’t interact with many people very often.
Crooks is obviously the loneliest character in John Steinbeck’s book Of Mice and Men. Crooks is isolated from the ranch workers community because of his race, being constantly discriminated against because of it. John Steinbeck shows his theme of loneliness through many characters, but the theme is reflected the best when looking at the character of Crooks. Loneliness truly is a scary and terrible feeling, which should always be dissipated by the laughter and company of others.