Loneliness In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

The novella Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck depicts the horrors of migrant workers during The Great Depression. Steinbeck includes many troubles these workers endure. One of the most torturous pains these workers experience is loneliness. Many of the characters in the book were faced with isolation due to a variety of reasons. This relentless isolation crushed the lives of many people in the novel. Loneliness is the driving factor that grimly affected the lives’ of Crooks, Curley’s wife, and George.
Crooks’s isolation is a result of the racist views of his coworkers, as he is a black man living through the harsh time of The Great Depression. One day, Lennie does an almost unheard of thing, he unexpectedly walks into a colored man’s room. This sparked a deep conversation of Crooks confiding in Lennie about his feelings and pains. Crooks tells his sorrow of loneliness: "A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who

George always has Lennie, yet he is still isolated from other people. He often dreams of life without the accident-prone Lennie: "When I think of the swell time I could have without you, I go nuts. I never get no peace"(12). George seems to not consider Lennie a true friend, but a liability. At every step of the way, George is forced to babysit Lennie, as if he is a child. Moreover, George and Lennie only had each other, this made them spurious best friends, even though George feels forced into this friendship. George is isolated from people that he can really talk to, and be genuinely friendly with. George's loneliness extended so far as to killing the only person who stuck with him during The Great Depression. Most people would not be able to kill someone that is as close as George and Lennie seemed to be. Nonetheless, George’s loneliness overcame him, and he murdered the only person resembling some type of family he had,