“I yearned for my mother, and at the same time I understood that she had sent me to this place where I was an outcast…[t]he pain and sadness seemed to spread to my soul, and I felt for the first time what the grown-ups call, la tristesa de la vida.” La tristesa de la vida, is also known as the sadness of life or loneliness. Antonio Marez, a little boy living on the plains of the Ilano, and Crooks, an African American slave in the fields of California experience loneliness and isolation. In Anaya's Bless me Ultima and Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, Antonio and Crooks are isolated by both their society and their internal struggles to have a sense of belonging.
In Bless Me Ultima, Antonio is excluded because of his relationship with ultima and because of internal conflicts of belonging. Antonio’s family welcomes Ultima, a curandera, into their home, but this was not seen as an honor by all of the people of the Ilano. Antonio’s friends and neighbors accuse Ultima of being a witch or devil, but Antonio views Ultima as a healer and
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Salves in America were treated very poorly, Crooks is an example of this because he is forced to sleep in the barn while the other workers sleep in cabins. His social status limits him from interactions with other people and he expresses his feelings in chapter 4, "A guy needs somebody-to be near him.' He whined, 'A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land." Crook’s bad circumstances and grim reality make him a difficult person to interact with and befriend, and this is shown when Lennie tries to talk with him and Crooks keeps pushing him away with unkindness. Crooks makes barriers for himself so that others don’t have to share in his suffering. Crook’s status and rough attitude isolates him from other workers and