This represents George’s loneliness, he lacks grown-up conversation, because all he has is Lennie and he doesn’t understand much more than a simple sentence.
Lennie isn’t a lonely person, he lives off ‘the dream’ that he and George tell each other. Lennie is always asking George to ‘tell me’, ‘like you done before’ and George doesn’t disagree. Lennie and George have each other ‘to look after’ and they are each others company.
When they arrive at the ranch Slim and the others are not great friends, and Slim adds that ‘maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other’. Steinbeck adds this in to show, the ranch workers knew they had no company, except friendly chats and games, but it was the way they had to work. They couldn’t get tied down with companions.
Candy is one the ranch workers. He is a ‘stooped shouldered old man’ and has a stable position on the ranch because of his age. He has an ‘old dog’ that can ‘hardly walk’ that the workers can smell his ‘a mile away’. Candy has been with him so much he had never noticed ‘how he stinks’. Candy has ‘had him since he was a pup’ and treats him as a friend. Candy’s loneliness is expressed when Carlson suggests that Candy ‘shoot his old dog’. Candy doesn’t want to shoot him as the dog has been his only company on the ranch. Carlson does not understand because he has never experienced the closeness, and friendship that the company of two can give. This is because he is one of the typical workers that lack in trust. Candy seems stumped and looks to for ‘help’ from the others. He tries to put off the idea by suggesting they do it ‘tomorrow’, he is desperate not to loose his only companionship. When Carlson leaves Candy lies on his bed and stares ‘at the ceiling’, showing his depression and helplessness and new found loneliness. Candy tries to close this gap which had come from the departure of his dog by latching onto George and Lennie’s dream. He asks to ‘hoe the garden’ and maybe ‘cook’.
Another expression of loneliness in the novel is the ’negro’, ’stable buck’ Crooks. He hasa ‘lean face’ and a ’crooked spine’. He is not introduced till late in the novel which maybe shows his lack of importance on the ranch. Crooks has ‘nobody’, Steinbeck puts only one ‘nigger’ in the book to show the relationship and hard racism between white people and black people. The fact that the others know him as ’the nigger’ showed how common racism was then. Crooks is by far the loneliest worker on the ranch. He has a ‘bunk’, a ‘little shed that leaned of the wall of the barn’. Crooks ’kept his distance’ from the others, and ’demanded that [they] kept theirs’. The others new him as the ‘nigger’ that reads ‘books’. Even though he is black, he owns a ’mauled copy of the California civil code for 1905’ and used the rights that he had to a strong extent. Crooks informed Lennie that ‘Nobody had any right in here but me’. Crooks wasn’t ‘wanted in the Bunk house’ and Lennie wasn’t ‘wanted’ in Crook’s room. Crooks had such deep loneliness that when he gave in and let Lennie ‘set a while’. He enjoyed Lennie’s company, and when Candy appeared, Crooks said Candy ‘might jus’ as well’ come in. Crooks new he couldn’t make friends because of his colour. So when Curley’s wife crushed the first bond that he had ever had with the workers, he new that he couldn’t change the way he was treated. He new if he opened his ‘trap’ to Curleys wife she could have him ‘strung up on a tree so easy it ain’t even funny’. To have the burden of loneliness hanging over you the way Crooks has, his loneliness becomes the worst on ranch as it is uncontrollable.
Steinbeck shows Crook’s loneliness in the way that a white person back then could change a ’nigger’ from someone with an ‘ego’ to someone who can ‘reduce himself to nothing’ in less than a minute.
Curley’s wife is a dangerous character in George’s point of view. Curley’s Wife is a ‘purty’ girl, but to George she is nothing but a ‘jail bait’, ‘tramp’ that could cause a lot of trouble if she came to close to Lennie. Curley’s wife is always seen telling ranch workers that she’s ‘tryin’ to find Curley’, which disguises some of her distinct lack
of friendship from her husband. In the 1930’s girls were seen as sex symbols. The Ranch workers didn’t want to know her because they would get in trouble with Curley, and no doubt get the ‘can’. So Curley’s wife has no one to talk to were she lived. When she came across Lennie, Crooks and Candy sitting in Crooks ‘bunk’, she took her chance to talk to the ‘weak ones’. Curley’s wife told them that she gets lonely having to ‘stick in that house alla time’, so she wanted to ‘talk to somebody’.
The fact that Steinbeck put in that only the ‘weak ones’ were left back showed that Curley’s wife had no one else to talk to and they were her only option. This represents her desperate loneliness. This lack of friendship led to her sudden death, she ‘can move quiet’ and no one really knows or cares were she is. So when she went to visit Lennie while the ‘guys’ had a ‘horseshoe tenement goin’ on’ no one noticed.
Lennie warned Curley’s wife that he was not ‘to have nothing to do’ with her’, she ‘laughed’ it off. She told Lennie that she gets ‘awful lonely’ and that she ‘can’t talk to nobody but Curley’. she trusted in Lennie and she told him of her past and how she could have ‘made somethin’ of [her] self’. She ‘moved closer to Lennie’ and let him stroke her ‘soft and fine’ hair. This shows how little she knew about Lennie before she let him touch her, and how badly she wanted a companion. All this desperation for friendship led to her death.
Steinbeck has configured these characters out of loneliness, and I think this portrays the main theme.
Steinbeck uses these characters to show the reader that lonleliness was all that the ranch wokers had in life and this is why the theme of the novel is so important.
Steinbeck also uses happiness like ‘husband’ and ‘each other’ but he doesn’t stray far from the theme.
Steinbeck has captured life in this novel, and told us of the many hardships men and women faced during life in the 1930’s.