Crooks is the stable buck. He is lonely because he is racially discriminated, he has no family, and he is bullied. When Crooks was in his cabin Curley’s Wife came in and said “Well keep your place then, Nigger” (81). She is racially discriminating him by his color and telling him to keep his place. This affects his loneliness because he has no one to stand up for him.
Loneliness Candy becomes the picture of total loneliness caused by age. He is rejected by all for being old and handicapped. His only company, his faithful, old, blind dog, is taken from him and killed; Candy fears that he will be treated the same way in the future and wants to join Lennie and George on the ranch. Candy is an old swamper (cleaner), who lost a hand in an accident. He comes across as being very gossipy and nosy.
He could feel like he’s in unequal marriage, where George has all the responsibilities. Curley’s Wife is definitely no happy and very lonely since she is living in her father-in-laws house. She thinks she has missed her opportunities in life by living with Curley and a ‘band of lonely men’. She even tries to get a bit of companionship by flirting and talking with the men on the ranch but when she does is comes back on her horribly. No one on the ranch can get the key to not being lonely; the men on the ranch use all their money on the brothel every Saturday night but it doesn’t stop them being lonely, Lennie and George think that having their own place would solve ‘everything’.
Candy explains this by saying that Curly is “like a lot of little guys. He hates big guys…he’s mad at ‘em because he ain’t a big guy,” (Steinbeck, Page 26). He is unable to seek reassurance from the other men on the ranch because they are, in a way, afraid of him because of the power he holds over them by being the boss’s son. Curly is lonely as he cannot socialize with the men in a carefree way, nor can he be entirely comfortable with his wife, who was never truly in love with him. However, the reader is never asked to sympathize with Curly, nor does the author ever portray his disappointment in a straightforward way, opting instead to make him angry and confrontational to show that
He has his own room in the barn because he is prohibited from sharing a room with the white men. Candy, looking in awe at Crooks’ room, says “Must be nice to have a room all to yourself”’ Crooks answers with “And a manure pile under the window, Sure it’s swell” (82). This separation makes Crooks more isolated than any other characters because of his lack of human interaction, which causes him extreme loneliness. “I tell ya a guy gets too lonely and he gets sick” (80). This also causes him extreme loneliness.
Then George warned Lennie to keep away from her; “Listen to me you crazy bastard, don’t you even look at that bitch. I don’t care what she says and what she does, I seen ‘em poison before but never seen no piece of jail bait worse than her.” Curley’s wife causes tension on the ranch because she annoys and embarrasses Curley by wandering around the ranch flirting. This makes Curley angry and feel humiliated because his wife is always seeking the attention of other men. Curley got angry with the other worker because his wife is often disappearing and he felt as if the other man laughed at him because he could not keep control of his wife. “If you can’t keep control of your god-damn wife what do you want me to do about it?” Curley’s wife’s behaviour on the ranch angered Curley so much that he often vented his anger on the other men because Lennie was laughing to himself.
Her life on a ranch in the 1930s, during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl is even worse because she is the only woman. Her life is surrounded my men who give her no respect. Throughout the story she is disrespected by them and after a series of events unfold, she ends up caught in a situation that she cannot escape. Curley’s wife is introduced into the book by the men as petty, cruel, and conceited. The men make her seem like she was a bad person, but in reality she was just lonely.
He also writes "an ash-pile made by many fires". This shows that many men must have walked through this road to enter a lonely and miserable life, moving from ranch to ranch finding useless work. I think all the people living in the ranch are lonely. There are particular people in the ranch who have lonelier lives than others. The loneliest person on the ranch has to be Crooks, who suffers from extreme loneliness because he is black and he is living in a ranch and the surrounding area which is very racist.
They are all, in turn, escaping from their problem and they all end up in the barn. The barn is like their home and it is in fact Crooks’ home. As Crooks has faced so much discrimination and racism in his life he has turned aggressive and impolite. He was forced to live and work alone – isolation – and because of this when anyone does try to talk to him he snaps at them. ‘Crooks said sharply, “You got no right to come in my room.
She was known as nothing more than the property of Curley. Her own husband did not even have enough respect for her to call her anything more than “my wife.” Curley’s wife was an outcast. Not one person on the ranch took the time to learn her actual name. Curley was short-tempered and eager to start a fight. He could easily have anyone who caused trouble with him fired because of his position as the Boss’s son.