Unlike George, Lennie or Candy, Curley's wife has therefore not had experience of being responsible for someone and making sacrifices for them - whether it is giving up petting a dead mouse or giving up the chance to drink and gamble. Through her character, Steinbeck shows that loneliness breeds nastiness and selfishness, as indicated by Slim, the figure of authority and empathy in the novel as he says “I seen the guys that go around on the ranches alone ... After a long time they get mean”.
Conforming to this observation, Curley's wife has also become cold and the only way she can feel a sense of self-worth is by flaunting herself in front of other men and by acting superior towards Crooks the black stable-buck, threatening to get him lynched when he tells her to get out of his room, "I could get you strung up on a tree so easy, it ain't even funny”. Undoubtedly, like typical itinerant workers, she too is so alone and desperate that she is willing to accept any person to communicate with to fulfil her need for human contact and appreciation. As a result, she is seen as "jailbait" and a "tart" by the other ranch hands; making her even more left out. When in Part Five of the novel, she finds a keen-looking listener in Lennie, she pours her heart out "in a passion of communication, as though she hurried before her listener could be taken away" about how she could have had a future in Hollywood. She is certainly overwhelmed by desperation to express herself, as companions are most needed when you need to vent your feelings, as George often does with Lennie.
Candy is an old man beset by physical disability, loneliness and rejection. “I ain’t got no relatives nor nothing”. Not only is Candy crippled physically, he is also crippled mentally by his loneliness. He has been driven to a state of despair and his only friend is his dog, whom Carlson kills on a whim in an attempt to prove his own power and position on the ranch. Candy is crippled by his loneliness because he is not able to stick up for himself, even when the most important thing in his life, his dog, is at stake.
Candy’s loneliness is reflected in his keenness to gossip to newcomers George and Lennie when they arrive on the ranch, and in his ready embrace of the dream that George shares with Lennie. He enjoys George’s fantasy of how they would just stop work and go off to a carnival or show together of they felt like it. Candy is prepared to offer all the money he has if it will rid him of his loneliness. “I’d make a will and leave my share to you guys in case I kick off”. Candy’s loneliness is also matched by his bitter disappointment when he finds Curley’s wife dead and realises that now the dream can never come true.
Steinbeck portrays Candy’s loneliness as a result and punishment for being subservient to the others on the ranch because of his disability. Candy is given to complete and utter despair by his loneliness. “I ain’t got no family nor nothing”, and as a result is driven to suicidal thoughts, “When they can me here I wisht somebody’d shoot me”.
Another character who is excluded by everyone else and thus longs to speak out is Crooks, the crippled black stable-buck. Crooks is excluded by everyone at the ranch because of his race, a common form of discrimination in the 1930s in America. Steinbeck uses the extreme segregation faced by Crooks as an opportunity to express a combination of thoughts on the theme of loneliness. Crooks, too, has become cruel and predatory due to the discrimination he has faced. When Lennie tries to "make friends" with him, Crooks' initial apprehension is "defeated" by Lennie's "disarming smile"; a sign that a small act of friendship from someone as simple, unselfish like Lennie is a great relief after years of isolation. But Crooks' response to this act remains very cruel; he frightens Lennie with suggestions that George may never return from his trip to the town and takes "pleasure in his torture", a clear sign that he certainly has become nasty because of prolonged alienation. Nevertheless, Crooks warms to his companion and starts to express his long-suppressed feelings, as he says "I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick."
When Candy enters and discusses the dream farm with Lennie, Crooks also becomes tangled in the dream, after criticising it first. His little interaction with sympathetic listeners has returned him to a dream and dignity, so much so that when Curley's wife enters and threatens his interaction, Crooks has the confidence to stand up to her as he says “You got no rights messing around in here at all. Now you jus' get out an' get out quick”. This state of self-assuredness doesn't last long, as Curley's wife lashes back at Crooks and his two companions leave him in his room. In a circular ending, Crooks is back where he began, which is a lonely black stable buck who dare not have dreams or confidence.
Crooks confesses all his feelings of hatred and resentment due to his loneliness to Lennie, “S’pose you couldn’t go into the bunk house and play rummy ‘cause you was black. How’d you like that? S’pose you had to sit out here an’ read books….A guy needs somebody - to be near him…a guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody”. This implies that he too, like Candy, has been driven to insanity by his loneliness.
In conclusion, Steinbeck has crafted a detailed map of the roots and results of loneliness in ‘Of Mice and Men’. Through the characters of George, Lennie, Candy, Curley's wife and Crooks, Steinbeck discusses many issues connected with loneliness. He shows how in the Great Depression, itinerant workers were "crazy with loneliness for land" and how the dream farm is just a way of putting down roots and forming lasting bonds, so that their purpose and meaning in life can come from people appreciating them, not from their usefulness as workers. Steinbeck shows how such bonds are impossible to make in the dog-eat-dog world of the Great Depression, because trust and loyalty are not easily earned from wandering men. On the other hand, animals like rabbits, dogs and even Lennie, are possible companions, since their vulnerability and dependence allows people like George and Candy to make them 'their own'. But again, this companionship is doomed because of one of the partners' vulnerability. Steinbeck also shows how prolonged loneliness makes people cruel and how a temporary, friendly reception can make people expressive and hopeful. Loneliness makes life a futile circuit of cheap, carnal attempts at human contact, which can constitute the petting of creatures, going to brothels or flirting with men. In the cyclical fashion of the novella, the result of these attempts is just more loneliness and the resulting indifference.
Throughout the novel, Steinbeck uses his characters as dramatic devices, to develop the theme of loneliness from different aspects of society. We see how it is not just the poor, the disabled or the people who are scrutinized for their race who are lonely, it is the advantaged, more wealthy people who appear better-off who are actually the most isolated of them all.
