Loneliness
Loneliness is a very strong theme in this novel. There are three main characters that experience being lonely: Crooks, Candy, and Curley’s wife. Crooks describes his loneliness to Lennie when he comes into Crook’s room one night. Crook’s says, “I didn’t mean to scare you. He’ll come back. I was talkin’ about myself. A guy sets alone out here at night…Sometimes he gets thinkin’, an’ he got nothing to tell him what’s so an’ what ain’t so” (Steinbeck 73). It is made known that Candy is lonely when he wants to become apart of George and Lennie’s dream: to own their own property someday. After hearing George describe it, Candy exclaims, “S’pose I went in with you guys…I’d make a will an’ leave my share to you guys incase I kick off cause I ain’t got no relatives nor nothing…You seen what they done to my dog tonight? They says he wasn’t no good to himself or anybody else. When they can me here I wisht somebody’d shoot me too” (Steinbeck 59-60). When Curley’s wife comes into the barn, she finds Lennie by himself and tells him, “I get lonely. You can talk to people, but I can’t talk to nobody but Curley. Else he gets mad. How’d you like not to talk to anybody?” (Steinbeck 87). These are all prime examples of how loneliness not only affects one character, but several. In Contemporary Literary Criticism, Sandra Beatty states, “We begin to appreciate the intense loneliness and desperate need for companionship in Curley’s wife…It is difficult to understand why a group of men who, by their own admission, are lonely most of the time and who crave companionship, cannot recognize the same need in a woman. The fact that Curley’s wife would attempt to befriend the Negro stable buck, indicates the degree of her loneliness” (7). Many migrant workers traveled alone, unlike Lennie and George. These men would get very lonely, but didn’t understand that Curley’s wife just wanted somebody to talk to also; not to be a floozy. This also shows how men failed to compare themselves towards woman, and realize their needs also. Curley’s wife goes to the extreme by trying to become friends with Crooks. Crooks is an African American, and in the 1930’s African Americans were still largely discriminated against. Because of this action the degree of her desperation to find a friend is made known. The idea of loneliness is shown throughout many characters in the novel, contrasting against George and Lennie who always had each other. Companionship and loneliness are two main contrasting themes in Of Mice and Men.