John Steinbeck Loneliness

The famous country music singer/songwriter, musician, and actor Waylon Jennings said, “This world that I live in is empty and cold, the loneliness cuts me and tortures my soul.” Loneliness is one of the fundamental themes of the novel, Of Mice and Men in which John Steinbeck wrote in the midst of the Great Depression. In this essay, I am going to show who loneliness impacts the three characters, Crooks, Lennie, and Candy.
Firstly, throughout the novel, Of Mice and Men Crooks appears to be a private man, when he is actually a very lonely and depressed man. We know that he was lonelier than anybody else because of what he told Lennie, “A guy gets too lonely and he gets sick.” (p73) Though he is a very intelligent man from what Steinbeck describes, nobody even hardly looks at him let alone acknowledges him, which we find out when Lennie asks, “Why you ain’t wanted?” Crooks says, “Cuz
As Candy says, “I oughta shot that dog myself…” (p61) shows that he feels guilty when other people do what he knows he should do, and this is just one example. Earlier in the story Candy talks about how the blacksmith and how he just quit on day saying that it was the food and that he needed time and space. (p19) This shows that migrant workers where very lonely and used excuses to quit a job even though they needed the money, but Candy has stayed because he knows that if he quits and tries to find a different job, he won’t and he’ll end up dying alone.
In conclusion, after reading the novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck that was written during The Great Depression, we learn that loneliness is one of the most important themes. .As the famous country music singer/songwriter, musician, and actor Waylon Jennings said, “This world that I live in is empty and cold, the loneliness cuts me and tortures my