George and Lennie, together, had a great sense of admiration for each other. Lennie looked up to George because he knew that he kept him in order. George looked up to Lennie (discreetly), because he knew how valuable Lennie's power was, e.g. "George spoke proudly…" and also, that Lennie gave George's life a sense of purpose, as he is responsible for Lennie
George had moral standards. He was a very polite and understanding young man. For example, on page 29, when Candy told George and Lennie about Curley's glove full of Vaseline, George said, "That's a dirty thing to tell around," for he disapproved of sexual innuendo. He had an extremely mature attitude to life, e.g. on page 26 when Curley was questioning George and Lennie, Curley had a rather childish and false impression that George and Lennie had a homosexual relationship, just because they travelled together. George then proved his maturity by not rising to the bait and answering "yeah, it's that way" in a somewhat laid back manner. George and Lennie's actual reasons for travelling around with each other were not the insulting accusations that narrow-minded people come up with (e.g. Curley), but a more welcoming and warm reason, their need for companionship.
George and Lennie's dream was their whole future. They valued each other, because they were both essential parts of the dream. They were the two primary cogs of their own fantasy. They shared a unique bond, in that almost every day, Lennie would ask about the dream, and George would start by reminding himself and Lennie how important they were. I.e. "Guys like us are the loneliest guys in the world… they work up a stake an' blow it…With us it ain't like that. We got a future…". Steinbeck used Lennie's situation wisely, as he made clear that the reader knew that Lennie was childlike, because of the way Lennie ate his food, i.e. "A few beans slipped out of the side of Lennie's mouth." However, there was another motive for this sentence. The motive was that Lennie gained the reader's compassion, as beans only slip out of someone's mouth when they've been crammed in, therefore, Lennie must have been extremely hungry to cram them in. However this minor point also makes clear one of the main themes of the story, the need to have something to look forward to. So Lennie was obviously looking forward to eating his beans, as he crammed them in.
When George mentioned the dream to Lennie again, later on in the novel, Candy, an old man who worked on the ranch, disturbed him. After they talked about it, and discussed their financial ideas together, Candy was then part of the dream. Whilst they were discussing their savings, a sense of excitement affected the atmosphere. Steinbeck used words like "wonder" and sharp, blasphemous language such as "Jesus Christ", to build the effect completely. While George told the dream, Lennie felt security and pleasure in the warm and playful door of the ranch that was in the dream. Lennie was afraid of the ranch he and George worked on, because there were men there. He was timid because he feared that he might have been "socked". His pleasure came from the thought of stroking rabbits and actually stroking other animals. These points again demonstrate his childlike conduct and the simplicity of his mind. Also, his shyness on the ranch proved that he didn't even recognise his own strength, because otherwise he wouldn't have needed to avoid trouble.
In the novel, there was an old man named Candy, who had had one of his hands chopped off in a machine. Candy had an old, smelly dog, which he had had for years. About halfway through the tale, Carlson became fed-up with the dog's foul stench, and so he forced Candy to let him kill it. Once Candy heard the gunshot, he lay a moment, still staring at the ceiling, and then "…he rolled slowly over and faced the wall and lay silent." This suggests his isolation, as soon as his dog was killed. It was unfortunate for Candy, as his only companionship was with his dog. So then, when reading the story, he gained my sorrow, as he then had absolutely nothing to look forward to, except death. Later on in the novel, when Lennie breaks Curley's wife's neck, Candy takes out all his wrath on Curley's wife (even though she's dead), i.e. "You God-damn tramp…Ever'body knowed you'd mess things up…you lousy tart." He got vicious because he knew that he had nothing to look forward to anymore, so then his last resort was death. Thus, he then had to revert to concealment. Steinbeck cleverly mentions all his weaknesses at once while he was having a go at the dead Curley's wife, i.e. just after he was describing life on George and Lennie's ranch, he "rubbed his bristly whiskers with his wrist stump." Steinbeck has mentioned two weaknesses here, his anger (yelling at Curley's wife's dead body and describing life in the dream to her), and his wrist stump. So by describing his weaknesses, Steinbeck manages to attract even more compassion for Candy from the reader.
Throughout the novel, there was a lot of racial hatred going on, as it was a very racist society in that age. One of the staff who worked at the ranch was the stable buck, a black man named Crooks, but he was referred to as "the Niger". Crooks even had his own room to segregate him from company, and also to protect him from a lynching by any of the other staff. One of the main themes in the story, is that of companionship, and Crooks plays an important part in the tale, as he is the principal character that emphasises the desolation side of companionship in the novel. For example, when the boys went into town, Lennie and Candy went into Crooks' room. After Lennie was finally made welcome, Crooks displayed an example of his loneliness and jealousy to Lennie by winding him up. He did this by "supposing" that George wasn't going to come back. He did this because he was jealous that a "crazy bastard" like Lennie, had a companion and he hadn't. His loneliness didn't help matters, as it had made him bitter and vicious. Then Candy came looking for Lennie, and so, he too got involved in the conversation. After a while, Candy ended up introducing Crooks to the dream. Crooks wasn't very convinced at first, but after a while, he volunteered to do the hoeing and the odd jobs around their ranch. Then Curley's wife came in. They didn't want her there, and so, Crooks told her to get out of his room. She shattered his fantasy of being part of the dream, and threatened that she could have him strung up, so easily, that "it ain't even funny." Here, the chapter ended like it began. The dream was shattered for Crooks. So now, Crooks, just as Candy had, has nothing to look forward to but death.
The story contains many other important characters, three of which shall be described in the next three paragraphs. I am about to describe their companionship, loneliness and dreams in the narrative. These men are named Slim, Whit and Carlson.
Slim is a self-contained kind of person. He also, like George, has manners and respect for others. Slim does not appear to need a companion or a dream. This is probably because he fears to trust people, e.g. "Maybe ever'body in the whole damn world is scared of each other."
All that we (as readers) know about Whit is that he had a dream, and his dream was to be famous. His fantasy was encouraged, when an old colleague of his, who used to work on the ranch with him, had a letter of complaint published in a magazine. The man was called Bill Tenner. Whit treasured this.
Carlson was an extremely insensitive man who liked to push his weight around. His only companion was his "Lugger" gun. His insensitivity was proved when he had the indecency to kill Candy's dog, and to then clean his gun during Candy's presence. Again, at the end (page 113), just after George had killed Lennie, he wondered: "Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin' them two guys?" He doesn't understand companionship anymore than he understands his own loneliness and meaningless existence. So this practically sums up Carlson, explaining that he has almost no emotive thoughts when it comes to considering others, just basic logic.
Next to Crooks, Curley's wife was the secondary source of loneliness throughout the narrative. She was very lonely because her husband, Curley, was out at work during the day, and all the staff knew that she "had the eye" and they thought that she was a "lousy tart". The reason that Curley's wife flirted so much was that she was very insecure, and the reason she was so promiscuous is because she was unhappy. The source of her unhappiness was that she never achieved her dream of being in show business. In a way, she achieved her dream in death.
The end of the story was tragic, with the death of Lennie, and the death of Curley's wife. The most pleasing thing about the ending though, was the fact that Lennie's death was painless, and that he died in the imagery of the dream. George and Candy's dreams collapsed by the absence of Lennie. Candy had only his own death to look forward to and George had nothing but the life of an old ranch hand to live. We, as readers, learn that, at the end of the day, the tale has a great sense of irony, for instance George said that he wanted Lennie out of his life in chapter 1, but we soon find that George is mentally lost without Lennie. Another feature to notice was when Candy told George on page 65, that he wished he'd have shot his own dog himself. George took this information from Candy as advice, and he shot Lennie himself. This again is ironic, as it hints that George and Lennie's relationship was like one of master and dog.