George is very intelligent, he knows what to do and where to go. He is seen as a father figure in the book with Lennie as the little child. Lennie is very vulnerable. If someone tells him to do something he will do it. He follows like a sheep to a Shepard boy.
Lennie feels as though George knows best and that he is far superior to him. They travel together, around California looking for work, as they are good friends. George gave his word to Lennie's Aunt, Aunt Clara that he would look after Lennie.
“Your Aunt Clara wouldn’t like you running off by yourself…”
Candy is a tall, stoop shouldered old man that works on the ranch. Candy got his hand chopped off by a machine while he was working.
He is a very lonely old man. He speaks a lot to the workers in the ranch but in his heart he knows that his only true friend id his smelly dog that is partially blind. When his dog is killed the thing he is afraid of most is to be alone. His hope is recovered when George invites him into Lennie and his dream of owning their own farm.
He realises this is his only chance of being with someone and not left alone by himself.
His dream is slowly torn away from him when Lennie kills Curley’s wife.
“You an’ me can get that little place, can’t we, George?”
Crooks is a great example of how loneliness is portrayed in Of Mice and Men. He is a black hunched backed worker that looks after the horses. The other workers over look him and they don’t let him in the bunkhouse so he has his own shed to live in. This creates an incredibly lonely environment for Crooks, being left alone because of the colour of his skin.
“Cause I’m black. They play cards in there, but I can’t play cause I’m black.”
Crooks has a very nice past. He used to play with white children and he used to be really good friends with them. His father did not like it and he later realised why. He acts so bitter because he thinks he deserves more rights than he does at the moment, also because he has no one to talk to he is very lonely. This shows that even the happiest past can be changed through loneliness.
Curley's wife is a very beautiful southern American girl that is kept isolated from the rest of the workers, as she is the only lady on the ranch. Curley’s wife has dreams of her own. She wants to be in the shows as an actress, dancing and singing to an audience. Her dreams were shut when she married Curley.
“Say’s I was a natural… I never got that letter.”
She does not really love Curley; she just married him in desperation. The workers are afraid to talk to her as they a scared that they might get in trouble with Curley, or even worse his father, The Boss.
She acts very bitterly to the rest of the workers, as they do not talk to her. She treats Crooks with such disrespect that he does not want to fight back.
“Listen nigger… You know what I can do if you open your trap.”
She acts this way to the workers to show her authority over the men from being the boss’s sons’ wife. She is a white female woman and still she shows her authority over a black man even though in those days males were given more rights than women.
She is not really a tart. She is just lonely and she is trying to make friends with the males. Eventually her loneliness leads to her death. Her attempt to make friends with Lennie goes horribly wrong when she invites him to stroke her hair, he strokes it too hard and accidentally breaks her neck.
Lennie is a very kind, good-hearted man that just cannot control his strength. His loneliness brings him to the barn where he pets the puppy too hard. Curley’s wife who is looking for someone to talk to meets him. They meet and get talking and that leads to her death.
This creates much tension between Candy and George not knowing what to do. They are afraid of being left alone for the rest of their life.
The death of Lennie was an affect of loneliness as he was forever being told to keep away from things and he was a little bit slower than the others.
In this essay I have discussed the theme of loneliness in Of Mice and Men. This has affected the outcome of the book as it caused Curley’s wife to be man slaughtered.
Loneliness is being left alone and excluded from everyone else. In Of Mice and Men loneliness has been experienced due to race, sex and behaviour.
