When Crooks is having a bit of fun with Lennie when it gets out of hand and Lennie gets upset but Crooks wiggles his way out of trouble. Maybe you can see. You got George. You know he’s goin’ to come back. S’pose you didn’t have nobody. S’pose you couldn’t go into the bunk-house and play rummy ‘cause you was black. How’d you like that?” Crook is trying to say you have someone, I have no one. Whilst talking to Lennie, Crooks lets out his inner feelings about loneliness “Books ain’t no good. A guy needs somebody to be near him”, “A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody”. I think Crooks reads books to replace a friend or friends; he needs someone he can talk to when he has troubles. Once again we see Steinbeck make you feel sorry for Crooks. He helps the reader appreciate how oppressive racism is. We see that Crooks and Lennie create a special bond, maybe this is because they are both outsiders.
Another lonely character is Candy. He is treated differently because of his age. He is just a ‘swamper’ and he only has one hand after an accident on the ranch, which he was compensated for with two hundred and fifty pound. The only friend Candy was is life long canine companion, until Carleson shot it because it was old and it smelt. Cady was distraught after the shooting of his dog. Steinbeck made you feel sorry for Candy because to Candy, I think it felt like he’d lost a partner and seemed like his only friend. You can tell he is sad when he says, “You see what they did to my dog tonight he said miserably”. Steinbeck creates the mood with the word miserably.
When George and Lennie are talking about their dream of having their own farm. Candy gets involved in the conversation and offers to put money towards buying this dream ranch. I think Candy does this because he would like to know he won’t be ‘canned’ with Lennie and George because he gave them money to get the place. I think he puts money towards the ranch so he can die happily.
The workers say Curley’s wife would have to be the loneliest character on the ranch. Just as Crooks is the only black man on the ranch on the ranch, Curley’s wife is the only woman on the ranch. In the 1920’ s-1930 when this novel was written, women didn’t have the rights like they have today. Curley’s wife seeks attention off the other workers because Curley doesn’t pay attention to her. She gets the attention off the other workers by putting a lot of make-up on and she wears pretty dresses. The workers on the ranch have different opinions about Curley’s wife ‘tart’ and ‘jail bait’. She talks about one day leaving the ranch and becoming a star in the ‘pitchers’. She tells the workers her dream because she has no friends to tell her dream to. Women were not as independent as much as they are now. In this novel, she wasn’t even given a name. When Curley’s wife was seeking attention, she flirts with them by showing off her legs; she is a bit of a tart as the workers say. Lennie killed her by accident because of his strength. I think she is the cause of her own death; I have two reasons for thinking this. First reason: I think her constant attention seeking killed her. Second reason: Her loneliness killed her; if she weren’t lonely she would have been in the search of attention. When she dies P98. It shows her loneliness disappearing from her face. When she is alive she is troubled and her face is always full of emotions but when she dies all that goes away from her. And she is left happy and trouble-free.
In conclusion, all the characters were lonely maybe because of the period of time they lived in or maybe because of age, gender or skin colour. These are factors that should be considered. I regard loneliness to be a type of disease, which eats away at you. However, George and Lennie were different, they had a good relationship. This made them over come the affects of loneliness.