Of Mice and Men. One of the most important aspects that is attached with most of the characters of the novel is loneliness.

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Of Mice and Men

‘Of Mice and Men’ is a novel written by John Steinbeck in 1937, based on Steinbeck’s personal experiences relating on life on the ranches. The characters, George and Lennie, are some of the characters that have Steinbeck’s aspects of his life seeing as they are the main characters of the novel. In the novel Steinbeck highlights the social conflicts of that time period, such as the climatic changes cause by drought and the financial collapse of 1929, which had increase unemployment and poverty throughout the United States of America.

One of the most important aspects that is attached with most of the characters of the novel is loneliness. Steinbeck has purposely named the town Soledad because in Spanish Soledad means “loneliness” and it shows the reader how lonely the town is. Loneliness motivates characters to seek an alternate way of life. The characters that start off together end up being separated up in the end like George and Lennie, Candy and his dog and Curley and his wife. Everyone on the ranch is lonely; this is because all the men in the bunkhouse are single. An example of this is when George says “They got no family”. This means that they are like orphans because they do not have a family and no one to care for them. The men that live in the bunkhouse also have nothing to look forward to, except work for the rest of their lives. Even though George has Lennie with him, he is still feels lonely and an example of this is that in the story they show Lennie play the game solitaire, which is only played by one person and is not a team game which means that there is no social interaction. It is also because George has all the responsibility and to take care of Lennie because Lennie is not responsible. This makes the other characters find it strange that they travel around together because most of the ranch hands tend to travel around alone. This can be seen when Slim is surprised at the closeness of their relationship, “aint many guys travel around together.” This shows that having company is unusual and being lonely is now seen as normal.

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Candy is also very lonely because during the novella he loses his dog and he also loses his dream. His life is the total opposite of his name because the name ‘Candy’ gives us an image of sweet things but the character Candy is the total opposite. His dog provides him company and has been his life for a long time. This can be seen when he says, “I had him ever since he was a pup,” which shows that the dog was someone he was able to care for which provided him with a family. The killing of ...

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