The Role Of Loneliness In Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

Poverty destroyed the nation during the late 1930’s in what would later be known as the Great Depression. This Great Depression was a period of time after the stock market crash that left society broke. It caused many to starve, more to die, and outright loneliness to spread. Loneliness was one of the major effects of the Great Depression. This loneliness is portrayed throughout John Steinbeck 's novel, Of Mice and Men. The main characters affected include Curley’s Wife, Crooks, and Lennie. These characters undergo the side effects of the Great Depression each in a different way, but ultimately compare as they become most lonely in the end. Curley’s Wife is just a young lady who had such big plans for her life, only to have them shut down after getting married. Crooks was declared as less of a person because of the way he looked and Lennie was defined as excess baggage. While everyone suffered from loneliness from one time to another during the Great Depression, the groups of people who would become most

The women, like Curley’s wife, did not have the ability to escape loneliness as they were seen as property that the men could later abandon. Crooks and the rest of the African Americans were lonely, as they did not have enough social power, and were not considered as important as the whites. Finally, the disabled, including Lennie, were not given a chance because they were seen as flawed. The one thing that all these groups have in common is that they are all minorities, so there were less of them. This means there were less people who actually wanted to talk to them got what they meant. They were all against the world, and all they needed was someone to talk to. Imagine how one voice would have changed their