Loneliness In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

Of Mice and Men Draft
In the novel ‘Of Mice and Men’ by John Steinbeck, loneliness is portrayed in many ways and contributes to many of the characters reasons for being who they are and the way that they behave. I will talk about how the 1930’s great depression contributed to making the characters have a sense of loneliness and how these people dealt with loneliness in different ways. Loneliness is the feeling of isolation and no hope or dreams in your life-which is what Steinbeck achieves by portraying this theme effectively through key fictional characters in Of Mice and Men. By living in the town of ‘Soledad’ (Spanish for loneliness), the audience gets an overwhelming sense of the depressing environment that the migrant farmers are living
Crooks is isolated because of his skin colour, "S'pose you couldn't go in the bunkhouse and play rummy cause you was black", he is rejected by his fellow workers and isn’t allowed to sleep in the bunkhouse, he is forced to sleep out in the stable with all the animals because that is how low he is considered within the community because he is black and racism was very bad during the 1930’s. Crooks was also considered disabled by being a ‘negro buck’ as black people were treated terribly as slaves and not in society. This is shown by Steinbeck’s language of setting as Crooks lives in a ‘little shed that leaned off the wall of the barn’ as if to say that he is not considered important on the ranch or by his employees or anybody around him. He also has ‘a mauled copy of the California civil code for 1905’ which conveys to me that despite Crooks being motivated and strong to achieving a prosperous life, his life will never be the same. Because of his skin colour he is often discriminated and most of the people do not take him seriously like Curleys’ wife for example. Her behaviour makes Crooks kick her out of his room, but instead of leaving the barn she threatens him with punishments if he does not act the way she wants him to. Crooks sleeps in a bunk filled with straw and his medicines are kept along with the animals medicines as if although he is one of the animals and
Her sexuality isolates her from the other characters and it is sexism that this woman experiences which is why she feels so lonely and isolated compared to everyone else. She is bored and lonely, but her attempts to engage the attention of the men on the ranch only serve to push them further away from her. She has already given up on her dream of a better life as a movie star. She has no name and is initially seen as the possession of her husband. She is also a good-looking lady who wears quite a bit of makeup and form-fitting dresses. She is referred to as ‘jailbait’ or ‘lulu’ and this means she is just referred to in a sexual way rather than seen as a lonely woman desperately craving attention from her husband and wishes she hadn’t wasted her life by marrying Curley because she could of made something of herself. When she begins to talk to Lennie she feels as though she can tell him everything without even knowing him for very long, she lets out her feelings of how she wanted to be a famous movie star yet marrying Curley crushed those dreams of