Mice And Men

3 Pages 781 Words

The theme of loneliness in ‘Of mice and men’


The novel of 'Mice and men’ by John Steinbeck is set in the 1930s. This was a time of economic depression in the United States. Depression was a time where there was not a lot of money around so people had to move around to find jobs. His inspiration came from his own life experiences.

The book is manly about George and Lennie they are two farm workers travelling through California during the depression. Their dream is to save enough money to buy their own farm with lots of animals and rabbits because Lennie likes rabbits very much. George is bright and knows the way of the world and has always looked after Lennie, who is big and strong, but "isn’t too bright". Lennie often gets into trouble because he doesn't know his own strength, he also gets frightened when things go wrong. The story tells us how strong lennie is when he finds a mouse he starts to stroke it but since he does not know his own strength the mouse was killed.

Candy is the old ‘swamper’ who cleans out the bunkhouse. He is a ‘tall stoop-shouldered old man’. He is cripple and only has one hand. He knows lots of gossip and tells George and Lennie about how the boss victimizes Crooks. Candy is lonely his only friend is his dog. He has had it since it was a puppy but everybody else in the ranch is threatening to kill it because it is useless. This is exactly how Candy feels that they will ‘can’ him soon as he is old.

Crooks is the only black man on the ranch; he lives alone in a dark and gloomy room all by himself. Everybody stays away from him because of his colour. Once in the story Lennie came into Crooks’s room and they started talking because they were both lonely and they started to become friends. Crooks shares the same dream as George and Lennie which is they will live ‘off the fat of a land’ and have rabbits to tend and look after the acres they hope they will have.

Curley’s...