believes it his duty to get this plot of land that Lennie wants so badly and he
will do anything to get this plot of land. This very much shows up the other
characters as lonely. None of the people at the ranch have anyone to support
them or to help them get the plot of land they want, and this shows them up as a
lot more lonely than Lennie and George as they have each other to confide in and
to talk to.
Of course, George, Lennie and Candy aren't the ones who share the American
dream of land, Crooks if only for a while has a interest in the plot of land
George and Lennie are trying to obtain too. His cynical and realistic (frankly)
views about the plot of land he says every American wants are soon turned when
he finds that Candy, George and Lennie nearly have all of the money they need to
buy the land. “You say you got the money,” said Crooks, “Damn right, got most of
it, just a little but more to get...got the land picked out too...” In reply to
this, Crooks is both surprised and suddenly interested in an issue he had
laughed off cynically before. “I never really seen a guy do it, seen loads 'em
go nearly crazy with loneliness for land...if you guys would want a hand to work
for nothing, why I'd come an' lend a hand, I ain't so crippled that I can't work
like a son of a bitch if I want to.” Crooks, at this moment may not seem lonely,
but if you think about it, he must be very lonely to almost taking up an idea
that he had so cynically pushed aside, with people of a colour he had seemed to
hate all the time that we had met him.
We learn of his hate of the white men at the ranch by some of his rigid and
sour comments about them, “My dad had a chicken ranch...some of the white kids
used to come and play there, and some were pretty nice, but my ol' man didn't
like that, now I know why he didn't like it. Now there ain't a coloured man for
miles around, if I say something, it's just a nigger talking.” We can see from
this scornful speech that Crooks hates white men because they are treated much
better than him even though they are basically the same at heart. Maybe a bit
why he wants to join the dream, so that he can have a ranch like before, and to
escape the life that he leads on the ranch in Soledad.
The simple dream of George and Lennie, Candy and Crooks isn't the only dream in
“Of mice and men”. Crooks has a second dream, to have someone to confide with,
and Curley's wife dreams of “bein' in the pitchers.”
Curley's wife has a dream of escaping the confinement of the ranch and of being
married to Curley, but as her name in the book suggests, she is a possession of
Curley and does not have much chance of doing so. She seems to think that she
had the chance 'to be in movies,' to 'wear nice clothes' and the glamour of what
would come with it. Of all the dreams that we know will not come true, this one
is probably the saddest, as we know that she would never have had the chance to
be in the movies, as the man who told her these encouraging things, was probably
trying to get her into bed. With all the dreams we know that the people who
wanted them - Crooks, Candy and George and Lennie, may just have had the
slightest chance to get their dreams but Curley's wife had the least chance of
all of them to get their dream as she is tied to Curley and the ranch and she
had no talent to be in the movies anyway.
One hidden dream that we don't really see much of is that of George, his dream
to be free of Lennie. There are only a few things that suggest that George would
want to be rid of Lennie, for example “If I was alone I could live so easy, I
could get a job and work no trouble.” This is maybe just a hint that George
believes he could have been better off without Lennie, but this is possibly the
only dream that has any depth and possibility to it as he could easily leave
Lennie alone at any point in the story. But in the end, we see that he would
rather live a worse quality life with Lennie, rather than live his life alone.
This tells us that loneliness affects George too, as he would rather be with
Lennie, than live a life that frankly would be so much easier for him without
Lennie.
The other dream on the ranch is for Crooks. His other dream is that he wants
someone to talk to, as he says he gets lonely as the only black man on the
ranch, and him being criplled also makes him lonely too. His large conversation
with Lennie where he pours out his anger and hatred of the men who mock him at
the ranch shows us exactly how he is so lonely. “S'pose you didn't have nobody.
S'pose you had to go back to the bunk house and play rummy 'cause you was black,
how'd you like that? S'pose you had to sit and read books all night...but books
ain't no good. A guy needs someone, to be near him, a guy goes nuts if he got
nobody, don't matta who the guy is, as long as got somebody, I tell ya, I guy
gets too lonely and he gets sick.” When he explains about his loneliness and
about him having nobody, we realise how important his dream may be important to
him as he dreams of having someone to talk to, but the brutal truth that he is a
black man and is hated brings his dream away from him, as he knows in that day
and age, people like him would never be treated normally.
I think that dreams play a central role in loneliness in “Of Mice and Men” as
they are the characters' escape from their everyday life and the only hope they
have in a time of disappointment and depression in America. As the title
reflects, these dreams that the characters yearn for rarely come true, and the
character's loneliness in the book is exposed more due to this.
Curley's wife is a very lonely character in the book; but at first glance, she
seems to have quite a few people to talk to. She has married Curley and flirts
and talks to many other men at the ranch. But this covers up the real truth that
she hates her husband, most people on the ranch think she is a tart and despise
her and she wishes she had never come to the ranch.
We first hear about Curley's Wife from Candy when he tells George and Lennie
about her Candy says, “Well she's got the eye after two weeks!” this meaning
that she was flirting with men at the ranch just two weeks after marrying
Curley. Candy then backs up this information by saying, “I seen her give Slim
the eye and Carlson the eye.” Automatically, Candy shows us what many people
think of her at the ranch, that she is a tart. The first time George and Lennie
actually meet Curley's wife is in their bunkhouse. She playfully asks them where
her husband is, in a flirty manner, but George sees through this and easily
brushes it aside. His reaction to her is very much the same to Candy's, “Jesus
what a tramp, so that's what Curley's picks for a wife,” he then gives Lennie a
severe warning, as he had been gawping at her when she came into their bunk -
“Listen to me you crazy bastard, don't even look at that bitch...I seen 'em
poison before, but I never seen no worse piece of jail bait then he, you leave
her be.” Not only now branded as a work by George, it is no wonder that she is
lonely when the people on the ranch think of he in this sense.
Her name also gives us a subtle insight to how lonely she is. Steinbeck
deliberately names her Curley's wife for us to see her as a possession of his
and that she will always be trapped under Curley's name and that, she will never
be able to get off the ranch, as this is the only place for her, as she needs a
husband to look normal, even though she doesn't love him. I think this also
tells us that this is why she married Curley, so she would have a husband like
everyone else, so she could be normal, although she regrets marrying ever since.
As well as her isolation from other people's comments about her, we learn much
about her loneliness in her conversations with Lennie, the only person who will
listen, even if he doesn't understand. Her first one is when she walks into
Crooks' barn and speak to Lennie there. She asks the men in there (Candy was
also in there) when Curley is, only to get the reply, “You gotta husband, then
you got no fooling around with other guys, causing trouble,” this annoys her and
she quickly says, “Sure I gotta husband, swell guy ain't he, spends all his time
saying what he'll do to guys he don't like, and he don't like no one.” This
sudden flare up of frank dislike of her husband shows us how frail and lonely
she is, if she doesn't like her husband, then who can she like, and who likes
her? After asking them about Curley's broken hand and when they reply being -
“He got it caught in a machine,” she thinks that they are trying to fool her and
cover him up, “Whatta ya think I am, a kid? I tell ya i coulda went with shows.
Not just one of them neither. An a guy told me he could put me in pitchers.
Sat'iday night, everyone out doing summin, and me I'm stuck here talking to a
dum-dum, a nigger and a lowly old cow, and likin' it cos theres no one else.”
This outburst of emotion and of her broken dreams shows her up as even more
lonely as we know she needs these dreams to keep her going and for escape as I
discussed earlier. The fact that she probably didn't have the talent to “be in
pitchers” as the guy who told her this was probably stringing her along to get
her into bed, as we also know that her dreams, her escape from the lonely life
of the ranch are never going to come true as she doesn't have any talent.
I think her last conversation is the same as the first one with Lennie, she
pouts out her emotions out onto Lennie , but the sad thing is that she speaks AT
him, not with him and this simply shows her up as more lonely again, as she has
no one that likes her, and only one person that will listen too her, and this
one person can't understand her anyway.
Crooks the nigger seems through most of the book to be the loneliest character
due to his colour and because of his disability. He was excluded from the group
and even George felt some hatred and dislike of him because he shouted at Lennie
and was also influenced by the rest of the group. We don't meet Crooks until
well into the book and we only have a few conversations to go from but the one
he has with Lennie gives us a large insight to his loneliness.
He describes his hate of all the other men at the ranch, “They say, I stink,
well i tell you, you all of you stink to me.” As the black man at the ranch, he
is seen as a lower, less civilised person in the ranch and is only ever invited
to a bunkhouse at Christmas, and only that is so Curley can beat him up. They
treat him like dirt, and unsurprisingly he is bitter and angry towards all white
men because of it. His bitterness is shown in the way he emotionally tortures
Lennie, when he starts to put things into his mind about George never coming
back. “Just s'pose George went into town and you never heard of him no more?”
Crooks enjoys this and continues to put things into Lennie's mind about George
being hurt, and he loves it as it is a way of releasing his hatred of white men
without anyone knowing, as Lennie would never understand enough to tell anyone
about it. This tells us that he is very lonely, as he nothing better to do than
torture a simple minded Lennie just for kicks, he is isolated by the other men
at the ranch and he can't join in with other activities at the ranch because he
is black. He soon backs off when Lennie gets mad about where George is and
realises the revenge he seeks in torturing Lennie isn't worth getting Lennie
mad. He then scornfully pushes aside Lennie's and Candy's (who just came into
the barn) dream of a plot of land of their own, along with George, as he knows
he would never have a chance to get this in life. He says about their dream plot
of land - “You guys just kidding your self. You talk about it a hell of a lot,
but you won't get no land...hell I seen too many guys with land in their heads,
but they never none under their hand.” This shows his isolation is due to him
being bitter. You can tell he is bitter by his manner of speech, that of
discouragement, and that he almost hopes they fail in their dream of getting
land. You know from this that he is lonely as only a very secluded person who
hasn't talked with someone for a long time would say this. You also see his
loneliness when he opts to join in with the quest to get land. When Candy tells
him, “We'll have nearly all the money by the end of the month.” After this piece
of news, Crooks suddenly props up and believes, for a while that he could be
part of this dream too, as he suggests - “If you guys would need a hand to work
for nothing, just his keep, why I'd come an lend a hand, why I ain't so crippled
that I can't work like a son of a bitch if I want to." You really can see that
he is lonely from this as he is suddenly willing to be part of an idea which he
had rubbed aside moments before. His willingness to take up an idea which would
take him away from the isolation of the ranch shows how much he wants away from
the ranch, and he doesn't care how. However, he is brought back down to reality
when Curley's wife tells him that she could cry rape and get him killed if he
carried on to tell her about his rights, which he tries to do as soon as she
comes into the barn. This shows him how easily he could be disposed of at the
ranch and his idea of living with George and Lennie is realised that it is
actually impossible for a black man to fit in with the whites (at this time).
He also reveals to us how lonely and sad he is without anyone to talk to -
“S'pose you didn't have nobody. S'pose you had to go back to the bunk house and
play rummy 'cause you was black, how'd you like that? S'pose you had to sit and
read books all night...but books ain't no good. A guy needs someone.” This shows
us very much how he is lonely as he has no one who understands him, no one who
wants to talk to him, this makes him very lonely indeed and as he says, “A guys
goes nuts if he ain't got nobody,” and this is exactly what is happening to
Crooks.
Candy is the lonely swamper who lives with his equally old dog in the
bunkhouse. He also has a disability, in that he only has one hand and this
excludes him from many of the group activities. For example, the group go into a
whore house in town, and being old and decrepit, he clearly wouldn't be wanted
there. Other times like when they are playing a sporting tournament he can't
join in simply because he only has one hand and he is generally treated worse
than other people at the ranch would be because he is old. He also could be
treated with less respect because he has a worse job than everyone else, and
maybe the other men on the ranch see him as less important than themselves
because of this.
The first time we see Candy in a state of isolation and loneliness is when some
of the men, namely Carlson, try to get him to let them shoot his old dog. He
greatly tries to stop this from happening because he has had it for so long and
he tells us this when he says - “Well-hell I had him so long, I had him since he
were a pup..I couldn't do that, I had him too long.” This shows how much Candy
loves his dog, and even though it would be much better for the dog to die due to
illness and arthritis, Candy wants him to stay alive as he has had him for so
long. He has nothing else left in the world and to see it die would suck the
life out of him. But the dog, nevertheless gets condemned to death, as Candy
tried to get words of support from Slim, the indirect boss, but even he gave the
idea the thumbs up. After the incident, the old swamper regrets his decision to
shoot the dot - “I should have shot that dog myself, I shouldn't have let any
stranger do it George.” He clearly feels that if anyone had to shoot it, it
should have been him, but i think secretly he regrets letting the dog be shot at
all, as it was his only company he had on the ranch.
He then of course opts to join in George and Lennie's hunt to find a plot of
land, but this is always looking like it will end in disaster, with Lennie's
clumsiness and Candy's old age and frailty, you seem to know it will never
happen, and when Lennie clumsily cuts off Curley's wife's life early, the
emotion of the lost dream of a plot of land comes out of Candy, knowing his last
hope in his life is over. His panic when he sees the dead body of Curley's wife
shows us that the dream of land meant so much to him, and that he is lonely once
more, his dream being taken away so abruptly. This is all summed up by - “'Oh
Lennie, you in here I been figuring more, oh my God Lennie'. He stopped and his
body stiffened..'oh Jesus Christ.'” This outburst due to his lost dream, shows
the loneliness of Candy, as he has no one or nothing to hold him together, as
even his dog has gone.
I have chosen George and Lennie to study despite them being the most together
characters in the book, but despite this they suffer isolation themselves.
Lennie suffers more, and his torture by Crooks shows this, when he has a picture
put in his mind that George would not return, he says - “'He wouldn't get hurt,
he'll do nothing like that, I been with George a long time and he'll come back
tonight.' He stopped in doubt - 'Do you think he will?'” This doubt shows how
Lennie needs George to survive and would be lonely without him. Another moment
when they feel loneliness is then George has to kill Lennie to make him happy
when he was dead. He tells him the story of how he will get a plot of land, with
rabbits and kills him there to make sure he is purely happy when he dies, but he
finds great difficulty in doing it as Tennis is George's best friend and this
dialogue shows us how he feels lonely when doing it - “George took off his hat
and said, shakily 'Lennie, take off your hat. the air feels fine,' Lennie did
so dutifully.” The two things in this which show us he is lonely is when it says
he speaks to Lennie 'shakily', showing us that he is nervous and sad about the
fact he has to kill his best friend. The other thing that shows is they would be
lonely without each other is that Lennie 'dutifully takes off his hat,' without
questioning George, this proving that he obeys and listens to everything he says
and without him he would be lost.
Here I have studied the three most lonely characters in the book and I have
come to the conclusion that Crooks is the most lonely of them all. He is
isolated from the group in every context due to him being black and disabled. He
also has no people to talk about his loneliness with, no on who truly
understands him, this makes him the most lonely as he has no one where as George
and Lennie have each other and Candy has a little hope with the dream of the
land and Curley's wife with her dream of being in the movies.
The characters in the book all display an inability to communicate with each
other, this leading to them being lonely. The first example of this is when
Candy's dog gets shot, none of the people in the room speaking up over the
shooting, and Candy is included in this and he regrets it later, as he wishes he
had shot the dog himself, or even kept it, and this makes him lonelier as he has
nothing to confide in.
Another incident where the inability to communicate affects the loneliness of
people is when the men in the ranch don't tell the boss or Curley's wife about
how Curley 'started' on Lennie, instead covering him up in fear of being sacked.
The only rare incident where Crooks does to speak is when he tries to ask
Curley's wife about his rights but is soon silenced by her threats about having
him executed.
This book shows us many different ways of life in America, including the dreams
of people in the 30's, the life of ranch men and about friendships. But the main
theme stands out to be loneliness, every page we learn of a characters sadness
or sorrow and of how then each of the characters are made more lonely. We have
seen that every character has loneliness, from the most powerful to the weakest
and how each situation affects them. I think the theme of loneliness gives us a
great insight into what life would have been like in the depression of the
1930's. I think each and every character has their own way of dealing with it
and this is what shapes each character's personality in the book, how they deal
with this loneliness. The togetherness of George and Lennie, and the way they
deal with loneliness makes them the least lonely in the book. The most lonely is
then Crooks as he has no friends, he is excluded from the group of men at the
ranch and is treated like dirt due to being black.
By Lloyd Griffiths, 11E
