Crooks, Candy and Curley's wife all suffer injustices such as discrimination and prejudice, resulting in loneliness and isolation. They learn to cope with their loneliness through their interest in Lennie and George's friendship. In some ways I think they may even be envious of the bond.
Crooks is a black man that experiences isolation because the society in which he resides is racist. The quote "A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't matter no difference who the guy is, longs he with you. I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an he gets sick" was his means of finding a personal connection to Lennie. Like Lennie, Crooks has a 'relationship' with loneliness. Crooks is rejected from every group of people and cannot socially interact with others, just like Lennie who can’t socially interact properly because of his mental-disability.
"Cause I'm black. They play cards in there, but I can't play because I'm Black. They say I stink. Well I tell you, you all stink to me!" Crooks loneliness results from rejection; others treat him unjust because he is different from them given that he is black. Crooks isn’t allowed to participate in daily events with white people such as card games. He is treated unfairly and therefore acts the same way toward the white people who have offended him.
Crooks is fascinated by the strength of the friendship of Lennie and George, especially how close they are. Crooks said, "Well, s'pose, jus' s'pose he don't come back. What'll you do then?" Crooks asks these questions because he does not have any friends, and wouldn’t know how loosing them unexpectedly would feel. He was curious and envious, about the friendship of Lennie and George, noticing that Lennie is retarded, he takes advantage of this situation to “torture” him mentally, to make him feel better and ease the pain of having other reject him, he also does this to ease his jealousy towards the friendship Lennie has, but that he, Crooks will probably never have.
He is striving to achieve sympathy and understanding from others. Crooks would work for nothing if it meant communicating with others. He even offers his services to Candy to work on their “dream ranch” to join in on the friendship and dream shared by Lennie and George, in order to leave behind him his lonely life.
Candy, like Crooks is an outcast because his age and physical disability make him different from the rest of the men on the ranch, but he always tries to communicate with them as much as he can.
Candy has one true friend in the world, his dog, which he cannot even talk to. However, when his dog is killed, he has to look elsewhere for friendship. Because of his age and disability, he has a feeling of uselessness “They’ll call me purty soon”. Candy thinks that nobody wants to be friends with him because of this disability.
Eventually, Candy tries to find friendship by attempting to join the dream of George and Lennie. This is one of Candy's desperate attempts to find a place in society and meaning in life by making himself useful to someone, by proposing the various things he could do to show that he is in fact useful and could bring a lot into the dream “I could cook and tend the chickens and hoe the garden some” “you’ll let me hoe in the garden…An’ I’ll wash the dishes an’ little chicken sutff like that”.
After Candy lost his dog, he felt much lonelier than he was before. The dog was something that Candy had owned and confided with within his years. Candy and his dog had the same relationship that George and Lennie had shared for so many years. He offers everything that he had to support the friendship including money, he offers the biggest share of money to realise the dream as well as services hoping that the pair will “let” him help out. An interesting quote is “Maybe I can give you guys my money, you’ll let me hoe in the garden”, this sentence is interesting in the way that Candy is implying that in exchange for his money, he hopes they will have a close friendship; Candy tries to buy Lennie and Georges friendship, or at least a share of it, but money will never buy genuine friendship.
Curley's Wife's loneliness has a different source; her husband causes it. Even though Curley's wife is mentioned frequently, nobody asks what her name is. Nobody wants to talk her because people are afraid of Curley; he is jealous and would start a fight with anyone who tried approaching her. She does not like Curley, and furthermore he does not talk to her at all. All she wants is someone in her life with whom she can share her feelings with. She longs for companionship.
But because she is Curley's Wife, most of the ranchers avoid talking to her, and she notices that she is being rejected and ignored and asks them several times what is wrong with her, and why doesn’t she have a right to communicate like everyone else does "What's the matter with me? Ain't I got a righ to talk to nobody?", and that no one cares about her "Seems like they ain't none of them cares how I gotta live".
She dresses the way she does, to gain the attention of the ranchers and to sooth her loneliness. She notices that Lennie finds her “purty” and tries to talk to him and get close to him several times.
She is obviously very desperate if she wants to talk to someone as dumb as Lennie, "her words tumbled out" when she talks to Lennie as though she were afraid that someone was going to take him away from her "she hurried before her listener could be taken away from her", because of this sentence we understand that she doesn't have the chance to talk to people often, and is trying to say as much as she can, about the emotions that have been building up inside of her "she went on with her story before she could be interrupted". She also makes sure that Lennie is listening to her when she speaks "You listenin'?", since she wants to be sure that what she is saying is being heard attentively.
Her death could be thought of as a misfortune, but as a positive thing as well because it ended her suffering; being the only woman in the ranch and having married a man like Curley she was destined for loneliness. Curley's wife's case of loneliness was the most severe throughout the novel. She struggled in her society to find somebody that she could befriend.
Even if all people are miserable when they are lonely, the consequences of friendship can be even worse. When one of the members of a friendship is removed, it causes misery and pain; when Candy lost his dog, he kept thinking about him, and felt terrible because he kept thinking that he should have shot his dog himself, and looks for friendship elsewhere. When George had to shoot Lennie, he felt terrible, because he had just shot his best friend, his lifetime companion, his only friend in the world.
Human beings were made to live together, thus all people are driven towards others, and it is a natural instinct to seek friendship and companionship. When they find it, they are the happiest people. The only downside to finding a friend is what happens when one of the friends is lost. This causes even more misery in the remaining friend, and forces the friend to start searching again, which is a hard process, because the person has taken the habit of his friend and being comfortable in his relationship, and opening towards others is harder.
One of the most important lessons we learn in Of Mice and Men is that Friendship and human interaction are two very valuable things, and that having them is as much a right as it is a privilege, that we much treasure as it keeps us away from loneliness.