Explore the theme of loneliness in Mice and men, how does Steinbeck show the loneliness of an itinerant lifestyle through three particular characters.

   Lenny being mentally disabled is probably a lot less lonely in his mind compared to the other characters in the novel as his brain seems to be more child like and he is easily occupied “I’d just love to pet those rabbits George”. The main goal in Lenny’s life is to have his own rabbits. In a way this would be his way of becoming less lonely as he could be an authority figure over them rather than everyone else telling him what to do.

   George is Lenny’s best friend and mentor. He is the closest thing to family that Lenny has got from what we can tell in the book and although he gets angry sometimes and talks about how he could do so much better without Lenny, “When I think of the swell time I could have without you, I go nuts, I never get no peace.”, he knows deep down that without Lenny he wouldn’t be the same “No – look ! I was jus foolin, Lenny cause I want you to stay with me.” When Lenny threatens George that he will actually leave George realises the loneliness that they would both face if Lenny carried out the threat and told Lenny to stay.

   Crooks is the stable-buck on the ranch. Although most of the men are lonely none of them are outcasts. This is an advantage which Crooks doesn’t carry. He is a Negro and in the 1930’s racial discrimination was an every day practise “where the hell is that god damned nigger?” Writing about coloured people in this context in those days wasn’t a problem and people wouldn’t think twice about using words such as “nigger” or “Negro” to a black persons face. Crooks has no friends, he just sits in his own little room in the stables “and he had books too; a tattered dictionary and a mauled copy of the California civil code for 1905.” Reading these books has made Crooks intelligent and being so bitter this intelligence makes him manipulative at times. For example he teases Lenny about George not returning from town “S’pose George don’t come back no more, S’pose he just took a powder and just ain’t coming back.” He knows that Lenny is easily fooled and teasing him is a way of gaining a higher social status as he has someone to ridicule. Crooks has no woman in his life and the book doesn’t mention that he ever has. The only time Crooks isn’t lonely is when the men play the horseshoe tossing game. Crooks in this unique social activity is aloud to take part and forget that he is a social pariah “Outside came the clang of horse-shoes on the playing peg as Crooks scored top points”

   In conclusion one of the novels main themes is loneliness. There isn’t one character in the whole story who doesn’t feel lonely. All the men move to a ranch and just as they make good friends it becomes time to move in to the next ranch and start again. For Crooks he will most likely stay in the same place for all his working life living alone until such time he becomes useless and then he will be thrown out into a world that has no place for him. By the end of the novel the only two people who escape this life long loneliness seem to be Lenny and Curlies wife.