Of Mice And Men Lonliness Essay

Of Mice And Men is a novel written by John Steinbeck during 1937. The novel is based on the lives of two characters ‘George Milton and Lennie Small’. Other characters in this novel are: Candy, Curley, Curley’s wife, Slim, Crooks, Carlson, Whit, The Boss and aunt Clara. In these characters, there are two women however, only one of them is seen in the novel as aunt Clara is introduced dead and the only female we see is Curley’s wife whose name we don’t know throughout the whole novel. We only see her as ‘Curley’s wife’. Due to this, some people think that Of Mice And Men is a depressing novel. In this novel, most of the characters are lonely and are alone. The loneliest person in the novel is Curley’s wife because she is the only female in the novel and so, to reduce the loneliness, she goes to the ranch and flirt with them by asking â€Å"Any you boys seen Curley?† After getting the answer, â€Å"She stood still in the doorway, smiling a little at them†. From this quote we can see that she has come here for something else and not to ask for Curley because she still stood there smiling at them. She knew where Curley was. â€Å"Think I don’t know where they all went? Even Curley†. If she already knew that, why would she come here to ask them? This is due to the loneliness she has to suffer alone because whenever Curley is there, he â€Å"Spends all his time sayin’ what he’s gonna do to guys he don’t like†. From this quote finally, we know that she is lonely, she is the only female and the only one she can talk to is Curley but, he is too busy with his own thing. So, she comes here to flirt with them. Due to loneliness, Curley’s wife get a chance to talk to Lennie and she prepares her meeting with Lennie. â€Å"I’ll talk to you later. I like machines.† This shows that she got a chance to talk to him because we never knew that she likes machine, and by her saying this, we know that immediately that she just wants to only talk to him and she has no likes or dislikes with machines, she just said that out of the blue because when Candy lost his hand while using the machine, we didn’t hear Curley’s wife inspecting about it So this shows that she was telling lies. Her loneliness was the cause of her death. â€Å"She was still, for Lennie had broken her neck.† If she didn’t organise the meeting with him, she would’ve been alive. She not knowing what Lennie can do, held his â€Å"hand and put it on her head†. However, as he is huge as a bear, his fingers are also like bears claws so, his hand got stuck in her hair and not wanting, he killed her by shaking her violently. The death of animals is common in the novel. It starts with Lennie petting the mouse. â€Å"you’ve broke it pettin’ it† Later Candy’s dog started to stink and so no one liked it and Carlson killed it. â€Å"A shot sounded in the distance.† When Candy’s dog died, Slim gave him a puppy and the puppy gets killed by Lennie unknowingly because he can’t control his power as he is described to be â€Å"as strong as a bull†. This makes the novel to be depressing because it isn’t the animals fault to get killed, why do they get killed? What is their fault? The mouses get killed because Lennie like to pet them and the puppy gets killed because Lennie stroked it for fun. This makes the reader feel that the animals got killed without any reason and so, it really makes the reader feel sad. The death of Curley’s Wife, puppy and the mouses are kind of linked together because the cause of their death is Lennie. He likes to pet and stroke the things which he feel nice and he did that the each one of these. Lennie is exceptionally powerful but, he never realises his strength. He thinks that everyone is like him-strong. He predominantly tries to run away from from problems however, he always does something wrong for which he gets into hot water by George. We see many people dreaming about their future but, most of them don’t actually achieve it. Candy’s dream was to have someone with him. He even says that â€Å"I’d make a will an’ leave my share to you guys in case I kick off.† This would make them a real good partnership but, the death of Curley’s wife ruined it because now, he knew that George and Lennie’s friendship is gone so, the dream will be demolished as well. On the other hand, Crooks is the only black person working on the ranch but, he isn’t happy because his only friends are â€Å"books† which isn’t enough. He wants someone with him too. â€Å"If some guy was with me, he could tell me I was asleep, an’ then it would be all right.† This shows that although he has his own room and stuff, he feels lonely. He wants someone to be with him too like others and just because he is black, no one is with him and he doesn’t like it. Crooks and Candy are kind of two sides of a coin because both of them have their position.Crooks has his own room and barn and Candy has two hundred and fifty dollars. Both of them want someone with them who they can talk to. Crooks is the only black person and Candy is the only person with a broken hand. Their dream is same as well. George and Lennie getting apart is also another reason why this novel is depressing. George kills Lennie which was really unexpected. â€Å"The crash of the shot rolled up the hills and rolled down again†. This was when Lennie was killed by George. This was the real sadness in the story. If you imagine two kids brought up together, lived together and worked together and then one of them kills the other, you would hate that person. Lennie was thinking about his rabbits, his dreams were welcoming him and George killed him out of the blue. This made the reader feel as sad as staying in a prison for his whole life. Due to this, three people’s dreams died. Candy won’t live peacefully with someone, Lennie won’t get to tend the rabbits and George wouldn’t have his own crops†¦ As when goodness goes, badness comes, George’s one dream died but the other formed. Near the start of the novel, we find out about George’s dream which was â€Å"I could get along so easy and so nice if I didn’t have you on my tail† is successful. He got rid of him and now, he can work on his own without even taking care of anyone. He can live peacefully forever. In conclusion, I really agree that Of Mice And Men is a depressing novel. I couldn’t even imagine that someone was so close to its dream and couldn’t achieve it just because one of them did something wrong. They were on the edge of achieving their dream suddenly at the eleventh hour, it flies away because Lennie killed Curley’s wife. This teaches us that you should start to get the thing right when you are kid or else you can get into really hot water when you are older. No one get their dreams except the dream which was useless near the end because George never wished that later on when he was thinking about his new dream. Curley’s wife was like the key in the novel. She was the only female and because of her getting lonely all this occurred and so, no one could achieve their dream.