Lennie spoke craftily ‘Tell me-like you done before.’
‘Tell you what?’ George said.
‘About the rabbits.’
George mentions that Lennie will get to tend the soft rabbits, which makes Lennie happy because he likes soft things. Ever since he was a child, he was obsessed with soft thing. Lennie’s aunt used to give him mice but Lennie could control his strength so he killed them accidentally.
George and Lennie’s relationship is complex. We know this because in the novel Steinbeck describes them as opposites.
‘The first man was small and quick, dark of face, with restless eyes and sharp, strong features. Every part of him was defined: small, strong hands, slender arms, a thin bony nose. Behind him walked him opposite, a huge man, shapeless of face, with large, pale eyes, with wide, slopping shoulders....’
Some of the characters in the book don’t understand George and Lennie’s relationship because at this time there were millions of people in America who traveled alone looking for work. Someone who doesn’t understand their relationship in the novel is Curley. From the beginning, Curley was suspicious of them. He said sarcastically to George:
‘Oh, so it’s that way’
He also did not understand the reason why George shows feelings for Lennie in the end of the novel when Lennie is dead. I think that George will be lonely afterwards because they were so close and their friendship was so strong.
In this novel, Steinbeck also depicts loneliness through George and Lennie and other characters for instance Crooks and Curley’s wife. Steinbeck shows loneliness through George and Lennie’s relationship by telling us that they have each other unlike most men during the 1930s. Crooks is a black man, which separates him from the others. He has no friends or family around and always sits alone in his barn. Crooks also has a handicap, which makes him even more lower status.
‘You got no right to come in my room. This here’s my room. Nobody got any right in here but me.’
This statement from Crooks tells us he knows a lot about what his rights are. He reads because he has no one to talk to.
Curley’s wife is another character from the novel who is lonely. Occasionally we find her wandering about alone, or sitting in the barn. She does this because as a woman at the time she didn’t have many rights.
‘Well, I ain’t giving you no trouble. Think I don’t like to talk to somebody ever’ once in a while? Think I like to stick in that house alla time?’
Curley’s wife is a woman and due to this, she couldn’t talk to anyone on the ranch except her husband. Her words show us that she did not like being alone in the house waiting for Curley to come home. It tells us that she was lonely and wanted someone to talk to who would appreciate her being there.
Another character who used to be lonely was Candy. Unlike Lennie and George, Candy’s best friend is a dog. Candy’s dog, foreshadows Lennie’s death in the story.
At the end of the novel Lennie is dead, showing that there is a return to loneliness. This also proves that loneliness over comes friendship in the end. Already at the beginning of the novel this was foreshadowed. The setting of the novel, Soledad means ‘loneliness’ in Hispanic.
Steinbeck depicts the themes of friendship and loneliness through George and Lennie’s relationship by using description and facts taken from real life at the time. He also uses other characters to show how life as a woman and black man was, and how even more lonely they were than people like George and Lennie.
