Loneliness In Of Mice And Men

Mother Teresa, a looked up to individual in the Catholic community once said, “Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty”. Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted are one of the worst feelings that a man could face, and brings out the worst in people sometimes. The novella, Of Mice and Men, written by John Steinbeck, discusses the topics of what social status and segregation can do to a man. People do not realize that loneliness and power have the ability to unite or isolate people. Power and loneliness are two completely different things, and both have the potential to be unifying towards others or divide them apart. Crooks, the stable buck at the ranch, is extremely lonely due to the men on the ranch, and because of their harsh treatment towards him, he rarely interacts with others and

When talking with Lennie, Lennie asks him why he doesn’t play with the other men, and he mutters, “ I can’t play because I’m black. They say I stink” (Steinbeck 68). Due to the oppression he faces, Crooks doesn’t associate himself with the other men, and thinks of himself as a completely different person. This happened in the 1930s because racism was normalized, and mistreatment of different skin tones and races were normalized, due to the superiority complex that the white men had. Upon reflecting the actions of the men towards Crooks, it is easy to spot the blatant racism that could easily be solved by seeing race as a positive trait to be proud of, rather than a sickness. Pursuing this further, Crooks' race plays an important part in his role on the ranch. Since he is black, he has no power over anyone, and is segregated from the rest of the workers, and even has no power over Curley’s Wife, who is a woman in the 1930s. After Crooks complains about them being in his room, Curley’s wife grows irritated and