This unlikely pair’s dream shows signs of failing when Curley and his seductive wife start to appear and cause trouble. George can sense as soon as he meets Curley that he is trouble and tells Lennie to stay away from him and his wife. However, when Curley picks a fight with Lennie there wasn’t a lot George could do.
Their dream of having their own place is shared by some of the other ranch hands, which are more of outcasts around the ranch. Candy is the first to find out. Candy is a ranch hand who wanted to join the dream of George and Lennie. Candy is old and only has one hand because of an accident at the ranch. As a result the boss gave him a job of ‘swamping’ and cleaning up around the farm. Candy’s only friend was his faithful companion the old sheepdog. Crippled with arthritis, no teeth and just painfully followed Candy around.
The dog is a clue of the bleakness of the future of the ranch hands, and also relates to how Lennie will die, because just like Lennie without someone to look after him he would die.
At first it looks as if the dream might come true. Now that Candy was there, and willing to give them his savings just for the return of a life with George and Lennie on their dream farm. Of course know one else can know. But Crooks (named by his bent back) is a proud and independent ‘Negro’ who also is an outcast on the ranch. He has become bitter with the racial discrimination against him around the farm. But Lennie does not see anything but a normal man when he looks at Crooks, so they accept each other’s company. Inevitably Crooks also wants to join Lennie and George's dream, offering his work and little money he has.
Everything looks as if it could happen, and if Curley’s hadn’t come nosing around in the barn while everyone else was outside playing horse-shoe tenement. She also seems to like talking to Lennie, where he is simple minded you could probably tell him anything and he wouldn’t care because he was raped up in his own world of rabbits. She is so overwhelmed by her loneliness she seeks friendship from anyone who will listen. "Think I don't like to talk to somebody ever' once in a while?" And Lennie is easy to talk to.
Throughout the novel, loneliness is a main characteristic most of the characters show. Candy has only his dog as his one companion, which is taken away and killed. After the killing of the dog, he has no one. When he finds out about Curley’s wife the only thing he is concerned about is completing the dream. He knows that if it fails, which by now is obvious it will he would return to his life the way it was. He does not want this because once again he would be on his own. Crooks is the same, he feels "...A guys goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he with you..." He tells George that he would work for nothing, just for a life with them where he wouldn’t be a lonely outcast.
Apart from the many hints the Steinbeck dropped throughout the story, he often says how lonely ranches are. With everyone being so lonely, and having the same dream, it would have been unrealistic if the dream had come true. He makes Lennie and George seem to be two halves of the same person, and they know it "Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world...They got no family. They don't belong no place...With us, it ain't like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us..."
Once one half of a person is gone so is the other. Once Lennie is gone George lets go of the dream, and its doomed failure is clearer then ever. But Lennie escapes the cruelties of the world by dying at the hand of George. After which all dreams are forgotten and the inevitable has happened.
