Loneliness In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

Loneliness is contagious. In John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, the ranch that George and Lennie work on for most of the book have many lonely people. Each of the lonely people have their own personal reasons for their loneliness. Throughout the book, we discover lonely person after person who describe why they are so lonely. Loneliness plays a major role in the book revealing itself through Crook’s isolation, Curley’s wife’s despair, and Candy’s feelings. Crooks really open up to Lennie and Candy and vents about his sadness then, and other times throughout the novella as well. On page 71 Crooks says, “‘S’pose you couldn’t go into the bunk house and play rummy ‘cause you was black. How’s you like that? S’pose you had to sit out here an’ read book… A guy needs somebody - to be near him.’ He whined, ‘A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody. Don’t make no difference who the guy is.

A ranch worker hates Candy’s old dog that Candy loves, “A shot sounded in the distance. The men looked quickly at the old man. Every head turned toward him. For a moment continued to stare at the ceiling. Then he rolled slowly over and faced the wall and lay silent.” (49). Candy’s dog, whom he had since it was just a little pup and the only thing he can really call family now was just shot and killed by one of his fellow ranch workers. Candy talks to George and Lennie about their dream farm, “‘When they can me here I wisht somebody’d shoot me. But they won’t do nothing like that. I won’t have no place to go, an’ I can’t get no more jobs…’” (59). Candy knows he will get fired because he is not much use anymore, with only one hand, along with him getting old, so he says he just wishes someone would shoot him so he does not have to go through any more suffering. Candy has no family anymore and his dog was just shot, he expresses a large amount of despair with his