Have you ever been alone walking or lying on your bed thinking about how lonely
you are? Do you ever wonder why you are sometimes ostracized from the group? You
can experience loneliness, mentally or physically. It can also drive you out of
your mind. In John Steinbeck’s, Of Mice and Men, Crooks, Candy, and Curly’s
wife have little to no friends and are forlorn. In the story, Curly is very
over-protective of his wife and she feels very alone. “Think I like to stay in
the house all the time?” she asks the guys, when they avoid speaking to her.
In this quote, she is fed up and fears being abandoned by the guys because of
her jealous husband. It makes her angry to be shunned by the only people she
gets to be around. She also says, “I never get to talk to nobody. I get awful
lonely.” She is obviously frustrated and lonesome. She doesn’t have any
girlfriends, there’s only the guys. In conclusion, Curly’s wife is alone and
she has no one to talk to but the guys, and they don’t want to make Curly mad
by talking to her. One other person who feels abandoned by the group and
banished from having friendly company, is Crooks. He comments as he talks to
Lenny, “ A guy’ll go nuts if he ain’t got nobody.” Crooks has no
friends, no one has a nice word, and no one even visits him. He is happy that
Lenny is talking to him, because no one else will. He also says, “If a guy
gets too lonely, he gets sick.” Crooks is alone and getting older. He is sick,
and he tells Lenny this to help him to understand that he should do anything to
not be alone. In conclusion, Crooks is sick of being alone and feels he is going
to go nuts. Finally, Candy is lonely after they took his dog, but the idea of
moving in with George and Lenny helped him cope better. When they wanted to kill
his dog he said, “I been around him so much….” Candy had his dog for a
very long time; the thought of getting rid of it hurt him. When he’s talking
to George and Lenny he says, “I ain’t got no relatives.” Candy is all
alone with no family. The thought of being with friends and being alive made him
really happy. In conclusion, Candy is much happier when he finds new friends and
is given the opportunity to move in with them. In the book, Of Mice and Men, the
three above characters are the loneliest. They are either old, feeling
abandoned, or over-protected. No one should be by himself or herself. Loneliness
is the worst punishment. People are not naturally kind to people or things that
they do not understand. The next time you're laying in your bed alone, think
about how it would feel to be there and alone forever.