Loneliness is an impossible fact of life that nobody can avoid especially during the Great Depression. In the novel, Of Mice and Men, a novella by John Steinbeck shows that in the early 1930s – during the Great Depression – was a period of great loneliness of men and women, therefore people are driven to find friendship in order to escape the loneliness. But barely anyone find the right companionship while a lot of them were still lonely even if they found their companions. Throughout the story, Steinbeck shows that everyone needs a friend and without friends people will suffer from loneliness inevitably. People who were being discriminated and intolerance or were deserted, they will end up in loneliness and isolation. Almost all the characters in the novel are really lonely and unhappy with their lives, and none of them can escape this unhappiness and loneliness because most of the ranch workers just come and go – they do not care about anyone. After the stock market crashed the Great Depression began, therefore the economic and society forces control them and free will seems like an unrealistically fictitious.
Back in the early 1930s, the society was still affected by Jim Crow laws where the blacks and the whites had separate facilities for socialising and living. Steinbeck illustrates that Crooks was the loneliest man in the ranch because he was black and he was being discriminated by the white man. Crooks was often being demanded by the white men to do things because he was the only black man in the ranch and was being called nigger because he was the only black man in the ranch. Crooks was being forced to live in the stable because he was not allowed to socialise and live with the white men in the bunkhouse. “‘Cause I’m black. They play cards in there, but I can’t play because I’m black. They say I stink.” ‘ (p/g 68) This quote shows that Crooks felt the pain of rejection more than he let other people see it, he was