Of Mice and Men

Graham Washburn

B 3/4

September 28, 2010

Loneliness. Being by yourself. Everyone handles being lonely differently. How would you handle being lonely? The textbook definition of lonely is, affected with, characterized by, or causing a depressing feeling of being alone; lonesome. In theory it's not that hard to make yourself not feel lonely, but is it really that easy? In Of Mice and Men all of the characters felt lonely at one point in time. Although they were not all feeling the same type of loneliness. The characters reacted to the loneliness differently too, whether it was by trying to interact with other people or just accepting it.

One of the characters that was the loneliest was Curley's Wife. "I never get to talk to nobody. I get awful lonely,". This quote is being said by Curley's Wife to Lennie. She is telling Lennie that she is lonely because her husband forbids her to talk to anyone else. It was easy to infer from the way that Curley's Wife acted that she felt like an outcast on the ranch. She was the only woman, let alone she didn't even really like her husband. She was stuck on this ranch with tons of other men who were working all day long, while she was forced to listen to her husband tell her she couldn't talk to the other guys. Plus the ranch its self wasn't located to her connivance. In order to get into town she would have had to go down a 10mi road, so she was basically stuck in the middle of nowhere with nowhere to go. Curley's wife dealt with her loneliness by trying to associate with other people on the ranch.

Another character who was lonely in the story was Candy. He was lonely because the only thing he really had was his dog, but the other workers ended up killing it. "The old man squirmed uncomfortably. Well-hell! I had him so long. Had him since he was a pup." This quote is showing how attached to his dog Candy really is and that his dong has been with him for a long time. It also implies that he cherishes a lot of memories...