Of Mice And Men And Loneliness

Loneliness is a dreadful emotion that transforms people into vicious monsters. In John Steinbeck 's novel, Of Mice and Men, he illustrates how loneliness affects different people. In this story, two migrant workers go to work on a ranch with the dream of living on their own ranch someday. Lennie, a grown man with the mind of a child, makes some mistakes which cause George to make some life- changing decisions. Steinbeck uses the characters Crooks, Curley, and Curley’s wife to establish that loneliness, whether physical or mental, can drive people to act cruelly, even though it affects people differently.

Crooks, the stablebuck, demonstrates to the reader how loneliness moves some people to be very vicious to others. For example, note

Another character that Steinbeck uses to confirm his point that isolation causes desperate behavior is Curley’s wife. Candy warns George about Curley 's wife, telling him that she is a "tart". George and Lennie are in the bunkhouse when they see her for the first time. "She had full, rouged lips and wide-spaced eyes, heavily made up. Her fingernails were red. Her hair hung in little rolled clusters, like sausages. She wore a cotton dress and red mules, on the insteps of which were little bouquets of red ostrich feathers… She put her hands behind her back and leaned against the door frame so that her body was thrown forward" (31). Curley’s wife says many times that she was going to be a movie star, but she ended up on that ranch married to Curley. She has always wanted attention, and she doesn’t get enough from Curley because he is always working in the fields. So, she dresses inappropriately so that, from the men on the ranch, she can get the attention she has always desired. She doesn’t really care from whom she gets attention, since she just wants someone to notice her. The claim that loneliness causes people to act unwisely is validated by Curley’s wife’s improper actions to get

Solitude induces brutal actions towards others, as Steinbeck demonstrates. Crooks is physically isolated from everyone else, and he acts cruelly towards the people he does come in contact with. Curley’s wife is another character who is physically isolated, but she handles her loneliness differently: by acting desperately. Curley and Lennie are both mentally isolated, but they react very differently to this. Curley’s mental loneliness causes him to bully others, while Lennie’s causes him to get bullied. Through all of theses characters we learn that all people need companionship, because without it, everyone would always be cruel to