“Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world.  They got  no fambly.  They don’t belong no place. They come to a ranch an’ work up a stake and then they go into town and blow their stake, and the first thing you know they’re poundin’ their tail on some other ranch. They ain’t got nothing to look ahead to.” This quote from the first paragraph in ‘of mice and men’ really emphasises the situation in the 1930’s.  John Steinbeck incorporated the theme of loneliness everywhere even the town name Soledad which is Spanish for lonely, almost every character displays some form of loneliness in the book. The first chapter of the book shows the relationship of George and Lennie these are the only two characters shown in the first paragraph. George and Lennie like all migrant workers wander freely over North America, finding work wherever they can. The novel is set in America in the 1930’s when most workers migrated over the country. Candy reinforces this by saying “Why…  He… Just quit, the way a guy will. Says it was the food. Just wanted to move. Didn’t give no other reason but the food. Just says ‘gimme my time’ one night, the way any guy would.” This shows the way all migrant workers were at the time, they just quit whenever they feel like it and move on to another ranch.  Slim shows how men treated each other by saying “Hardly none of the guys ever travel together.  I hardly never seen two guys travel together. You know how the hands are, they just come in and get  their  bunk and work a month,  and then they quit  and go out  alone. Never seem to give a damn about nobody. It jus’ seems kinda funny a cuckoo like him and a smart little guy like you travelin’ together.” The reason for this is because it would be easier for one person to find a job than two people.

George and Lennie are different than the other ranch hands as they string along together. This was very peculiar in the 1930’s for migrant workers as it would be harder to find work for two people than one person. Workers generally lived in solitude, not making friends not maintaining relationships, it was easier for them to do this, but George and Lennie do not do this, they go around the country together looking for work, they also have a dream. Their dream is to have a small patch of land with a house, they think they are unique but every single migrant worker aspires to this dream. Lennie love’s hearing how they will live their life and George deep down knows that there never going to achieve the dream because Lennie dose not understand how to act ‘normal’. Lennie is rather like a small child, he loves to pet things with his hands and also has a very simple way of thinking. George tries to make Lennie remember but Lennie finds it hard to remember anything. George and Lennie’s  relationship is not really one of friendship but George looks after Lennie like a carer, and Lennie looks up to George as a role model and aspires to be George copying his every move as this passage shows  ‘Lennie, who had been watching, imitated George exactly. He pushed himself back,  drew up his knees,  embraced them, looked over  to George to see whether  he had it  just  right.  He pulled his hat down a little more over his eyes, the way George’s hat was’

Candy is by far the loneliest character in the book, he is disabled therefore he cannot perform any of the things the other ranch hands can, like horse shoes or going into town and staying in a cat house. His only companion was an ancient sheep dog, Carlson bullied Candy into getting it killed, and this made candy even lonelier. The other ranch hands seem to have no empathy for Candy or Lennie and George. We can see this because Candy was begging them to spare his dog, the dog was doing no harm what so ever but Carlson wanted rid of it because it smelled. It just shows how the men thought in the 1930’s, they had nobody and people with somebody or something were seen as weird and were out casted just like George and Lennie. The most important thing to Candy is a secure place to call home where he can rest without the fear of being canned, he would do anything to get the place with George and Lennie as it would let him be safe. Candy is willing to give every cent he has got into the piece of land with the house on the ranch he cannot relate to anyone as he is old and crippled.

Crooks is another outcast, he is segregated because he is black the others don’t want to hang around with him because of his skin colour, his living apartment is a barn, instead of a bed he sleeps on a wooden box filled with straw ‘Crooks’ bunk was a long box filled with straw, on which his blankets were flung’, this shows that the men treated crooks like an animal. The Christmas time quote from Candy shows best how Crooks is treated  ‘“They let the nigger come in that night. Little skinner name of Smitty took after the nigger. Done pretty good, too. The guys wouldn’t let him use his feet, so the nigger got him. If he coulda used his feet, Smitty says  he  woulda  killed  the  nigger.  The  guys  said  on  account  of  the nigger’s got a crooked back, Smitty can’t use his feet.” He paused in relish of the memory.’ The last sentence shows that they treat Crooks almost as a punching bag. Crook’s consoled to Lennie telling him how Lennie is lucky and has somebody to be there fro him, then he tells Lennie how it is for him. Crook’s only has books, the other men seem to think this is what he enjoys but as he is consoling to Lennie he says just how lonely he gets. “Books ain’t no good. 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,  long’s he’s with you. I tell ya,” he cried, “I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an’ he gets sick.” This is a key quote as it shows that Crooks is jealous of George and Lennie as they have each other and he doesn’t have anyone.  Crook’s past was so much different than how he lives now. All the children of his age played with him, as children do not think about skin colour only about how the person is, they didn’t care that Crooks was a black. But they soon stopped playing with him because of their parents. “I remember when I was a little kid on my old man’s chicken ranch. Had two brothers. They was always near me, always  there. Used to sleep right in the same room, right in the same bed—all three Had a strawberry patch. Had an alfalfa patch. Used to turn the chickens out in the alfalfa on a sunny morning. My brothers’d set on a fence rail an’ watch ‘em. -white chickens they was.” This quote shows how much crooks would love to go back and relive his past again. To Crook’s the dream seems mad as he has seen many people coming through all wanting the same thing. He is so bitter because as he said he needs someone to be round him when he realises that Lennie is not going to harm him he begins to welcome Lennie.

Curley’s wife is seen as a harlot in the book. She goes round the ranch showing herself off. What she wants is somebody to talk to and a friend, but she goes about it in a way that makes the men scared, as they do not want to get on the wrong side of Curley as he is a boxer and is handy with his fists. The name Curley’s wife makes her seem like a possession of Curley. We learn later on in the book that she wanted to be in films she is talking about when she lived in Salinas “He says he was gonna put me in the movies. Says I was a natural. Soon’s he got  back to Hollywood he was  gonna write to me about  it.” She shows that this way of life is second best to what she wanted to do. Se describes ranch life with distaste, as she wanted to be in the movies and live in Hollywood.

The barn incident was partly Curley’s wife’s fault as she could not keep away from people to talk to, and as the men were out playing horseshoes Lennie was the only one she could talk to. Lennie did not understand why she wanted to talk to him but she let him fell her hair and that was when it all went wrong. Lennie did not understand to get off her hair he thought it felt nice so he wanted to grab on. This relates to his simple way of thinking. Lennie and Curley’s wife are both lonely. This factor brought them together; they both needed somebody to talk to. John Steinbeck doesn’t really write about Curley’s wife sympathetically until she dies. In the novel John Steinbeck illustrated the theme of loneliness in almost every single character.  In the end George kills Lennie because he knows if he lets any of the other men do it then they will lynch him and make it slow and painful for Lennie, but George makes Lennie as happy as he can by telling him bout the rabbits and the place of land. He kills Lennie as painlessly as possible. In George’s future I think he will just be an average skinner, working a few months then leaving or sleeping in a cathouse every month. The novel I think is pessimistic as the title means if you plan things they may not turn out how you had wished, just like the plan of the house with the plot of land for Lennie and George.

 Stern Uruk  2009