Of Mice and Men “Which of the character in of mice and men is the loneliest and why?” Essay

â€Å"Of mice and men† is the title of John Steinbeck’s novella the name is inspired by Robert Burns’s poem. There was a belief that America was the land of opportunity. In the nineteen hundreds, there was great depression in America because there wasn’t enough money around, so people couldn’t get jobs with decent pay. Some people went around from farm to farm doing temporary work, they were called ranch workers. Due to this lack of money and jobs being temporary, people moved around so much they were unable to hold friendships, so some people became very anti social and others developed unusual characteristics. John Steinbeck was a writer who did travel around ranches and had an idea of what the ranch life was like I believe he wrote the novella not just to show people the lives lead in the great depression but also to give them an idea of what his personal experiences had been like. The two main characters in â€Å"Of Mice and Men† are George and Lennie. George is first introduced as being â€Å"small and quick, dark of face, with restless eyes and sharp, strong features.† where as Lennie is described as being Georges opposite â€Å"his opposite, a huge man, shapeless of face, with large, pale eyes, with wide sloping shoulders:† Lennie is very distinctive for his animal like qualities. During the play Of Mice and Men George and Lennie go round together unlike most others people in there time. Lennie has a mental disability where he forgets large amounts of the information he is given. This causes him to have to rely on his instincts. He possesses a child-like characteristic in the way he acts and responds to the feedback others give him. Lennie is a large, powerful man. He and George have a strong friendship and have known each other for a long time and don’t want to lose each other despite the friction that Lennie’s memory occasionally causes in conversations. George is a clever person and has a powerful friendship with Lennie. He finds that he is sometimes isolated from proper conversation when alone with Lennie because of his superior intellect and understanding. George has a need to look after Lennie like a parent due to Lennies mentality, he was asked by Lennies aunt to look after him when she died. I believe he uses this reason as a partial excuse to hide his attachment to Lennie as a friend and parental figure which he needs to feel moderately more secure than those around him who travel alone. Both Lennie and George need each other’s friendship and each other’s ability to survive; George provides Lennie with knowledge of what to do and how to survive whereas George has Lennie to protect him from physical attacks as they go around. They also share a hope to accomplish the â€Å"American dream† to go â€Å"‘An’ live of the fatta the lan'† as Lennie states which basically means is to live of the land or farm the crops. I feel that both characters have developed unusual characteristics to deal with the lack of people they can rely on and trust. Lennie has an unusual desire to pet anything that’s alive and show it affection. This attachment to his desire causes him to break the rules George sets him to help himself. I think this form of emotion is propelled by his desire to have happiness and be loved by something that lives. This is fairly ironic as every animal he pets he kills due to his strength, which in turn creates a void of loneliness in Lennies life. George does not appear to have any huge flaws, he is fairly untrusting as to why people do things and analyses everything he’s told. Apart from Lennie, he has no solace and even the trust between him and Lennie cannot give him too much support as Lennie is retarded and attempts to sneak animals around with him. Because they both have each other, they don’t feel like the loneliest people in the world. Is something George says to Lennie â€Å"Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world† â€Å"With us it ain’t like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us.† Is what Lennie says after George has done his part of there story so all in all I don’t believe that either George or Lennie are the loneliest characters in Of Mice and Men because they have a friendship that no one else has and can talk between each other to an extent without worrying over consequences. The next person to be properly introduced into the novella is Candy, an old man who enters slowly into the room. Candy walks in and has his dog next to his heel an old sheep dog â€Å"gray of muzzle, and with pale, blind old eyes. The dog struggled lamely to the side of the room and lay down, grunting softly to himself and licking his grizzled, moth-eaten coat.† The dog is old and tired and hurts as it moves around; later on the dog is shot as it is of no use to anyone and is in pain whilst it’s alive. I feel the sheep dog reflects its owner’s future; as Candy grows older, he will be no use to any farm and will be kicked out and die due to his lack of money. I personally feel that the dog’s qualities are mentioned more than the man’s so that you see the man like his dog sharing a sort of bond similar to George and Lennies. Candy loses his dog the chapter after it is introduced. This dog is an animal that Candy has become extremely attached to and I believe he sees it as an old companion he can always trust to be there. When he looses his dog he looses his friend. Candy knows he is getting old and his fate in the novella seems sealed and he knows it. When he is of no use and cant do any labor work he will die. Which shows he must have lead a fairly lonely unfulfilled life even by that years standards. I consider Candy to be one of the people who could possibly be seen as the loneliest as he loses his companion and is sort of an image of how most ranch workers are doomed to end up dying due to loosing there abilities to work. He shows how desperate he is to escape his fate when joining with George and Lennie to try and get enough money to buy some land. The next character to be mentioned in â€Å"Of mice and Men† is Crooks he is a black person who is referred to as a nigger. He is disabled and outcast from the society of white people as racism was very strong in those years. He lives in a stable away from everyone else in the novella and has only books for company. The only one who ever enters his room without a purpose is Lennie and when he does Crooks starts off being uneasy about it when more people enter he pretends to be angry but it says â€Å"It was difficult for Crooks to conceal his pleasure with anger.† I think this suggests he is a decent guy who likes company but doesn’t want to appear weak to any of them. Crooks is taken advantage of by Curley’s wife a character who appears to everyone in the play to be trouble and not worth any of there time. She discriminates Crooks and has power over him because she is the bosses’ sons’ wife and they will believe anything she says about him and if that happens he will get kicked off the ranch. Of all of the people to be alone in this novella I believe Crooks is possibly one of the loneliest. Crooks has no one to be friends with, is discriminated against and shown prejudice and is also disabled so he cannot walk or get around easily. I think Crooks represents all people treated poorly because of racism and in a way how black people lived through the depression. The next person to enter into the novella is a woman whose name is never shown as she is always referred to as Curley’s wife, which shows that males are the dominant sex at the time the play is based on. Curley’s wife is the only woman within the entire novella she is a very complex woman and shows different people varied personality. She comes into the story flirting with the group of men she meets to tempt the men for attention and because she is bored. She wears makeup and has red lips and polished nails this suggests she has a lot of spare time. She is considered bad news by the men who are around her because she is the wife of Curley who is the son of the boss and can get anyone kicked off the farm. When alone with Lennie Curley’s wife confide in him about her life â€Å"I don’t like Curley. He ain’t a nice fella.†, â€Å"Coulda been in the movies, an’ had nice clothes – all of them nice clothes like they wear† I think that Curley’s wife was tricked by a chat up line about the possibility of her being in the movies and is fairly naive about the fact he could have been lying. I believe that she thought she was running out of options and time and decided to be with someone who wasn’t doing to badly for themselves and went with Curley. I believe this was a bad idea because Curley doesn’t have any time to be with her except to make she is being loyal to him and whilst doing this makes everyone try to evade her so they don’t get into trouble with Curley. So Curley’s wife doesn’t receive much attention apart from when taunting the men. She knows she has power over one of the workers especially and threatens Crooks as she knows how easily she can get him into trouble so she uses this power to entertain herself and discriminates him. I think that Curley’s wife could be one of the loneliest in the novella as everyone deliberately tries to evade her. Anyone she stays around gets threatened by her husband that does not spend time with her so she is left alone and since there are no other women around on this farm she is alone and powerless. Curley enters the novella shortly after his wife has and demands someone tell him where she is. I think Curley is a very insecure and aggressive, ignorant person. He is insecure because he is short and uses his strength to fight people who are tall so as to show that he is strong and keep a powerful reputation this makes him aggressive so the people he works around don’t like him. I feel he is ignorant for various reasons he fights to prove he is strong but the only one he is proving this too is himself whilst doing this he scares everyone else away as whoever he does fight will get in trouble and risk loosing there job as he is the son of the boss. Curley I don’t think is one of the loneliest in the novella as he has a wife and a successful parent to look after him and keep him content in several ways, he has the power to get rid of people he does not like or work against them and he gets respect from his status. Of all of these main characters in the novella I consider Candy and Crooks to be the two loneliest Candy because of the fact he knows how he will soon be useless and the fact he looses his closest companion and Crooks because he is disabled and discriminated against yet seems happy to be around people. I think Crooks also because he is sort of an outcast from a community that is made up from people who are afraid of each other but still able to group up on him when he is around. Both of these characters know they have no future where they are and wont be able to secure anything before dying both there fates are sealed with them completely alone unlike all the others that’s why I chose them.