Consider the theme of loneliness in the novel 'Of Mice and Men'. How does it affect the friendships and relationships in the novel?

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Of Mice and Men.

Task: Consider the theme of loneliness in the novel ‘Of Mice and Men’. How does it affect the friendships and relationships in the novel?

        

        For this essay I will be discussing the novel ‘Of Mice and Men’ and will be considering the theme of loneliness and how it affects the friendship and relationships between the characters throughout the story.

         The inspiration for the novel, which was set in the 1930’s, came from Steinbeck himself. In the years of 1919 to 1926 John Steinbeck undertook a series of manual, unskilled jobs, one of which was a farm labourer on ranches. It was this experience which seems subsequently to have provided the setting for his short novel ‘Of Mice and Men’. The book is about what life was like on a ranch and how you were treated.

The characters have positions in the hierarchy. The people who are at the bottom are referred to as the ‘Social Rejects’ though no one has ever called them that before, Steinbeck makes it clearly obvious that they are. Lennie, Candy and Crooks are the ‘Social Rejects’ in the novel and all of these characters have a disability of some kind in which we will find out later on in the essay. It is these disabilities which make the ‘reject’s’ lonely. They are not much use to anybody, especially Crooks, who is rarely spoken to.

        At the start of the story, the scene is set in a small town called ‘Soledad.’ Ironically the word Soledad means loneliness which is one of the main themes in the novel.

The two main characters in the story are George and Lennie. They are both migrant labourer workers who keep each other company throughout. Their features are very different as George small with a dark face and has very definitive features with ‘restless eyes.’ Lennie is a huge man with large, pale eyes ‘sunken’ into a shapeless face with sloping shoulders.  Steinbeck uses a lot of animal similes when talking about Lennie, ‘and he walked heavily, dragging his feet a little, the way a bear drags his paws.’ This shows that Lennie is like an animal that can’t control his strength, he needs George to keep him under control.

They both share a ‘dream’, ‘The American Dream’, where they will, save up enough money to buy their own small farm but it has a different importance for each of them. For Lennie his dream is to look after rabbits of his own, but for George the ‘dream’ offers him a future where he can be his own man, working for himself and being independent. They have planned the dream in detail and this is what drives them on- they are determined to relive their dream. ‘Go on, George!  Tell about what were gonna have in the garden and about the rabbits in the cages and about the rain in the winter and the stove, and how thick the cream is on the milk like you can hardly cut it. Tell about that, George.’

 A central feature of the novel is the unlikely relationship between these two friends. Although Lennie has a mental immaturity and is totally reliant upon George for his survival, George also relies on Lennie for companionship in the generally unfriendly and lonely environment of the migrant labourer, which is also equally important. These are the main two reasons why they travel together.        

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 We can tell that George is important to Lennie. He looks up to him and model’s his behaviour on George’s actions. For example, when they are sitting round the pool at the beginning of Chapter One Lennie had been watching him closely and ‘imitated George exactly.’ When George, feeling angry and frustrated, ‘explodes’ at Lennie and says to him, ‘God almighty, if I was alone I could live so easy’ Lennie’s face is ‘drawn with terror’- he cannot bear George to be angry with him.  However, George, even though often frustrated at being tied to Lennie, cares about him and ...

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