Of Mice and Men Themes

A True Man’s Heart
In the short novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck hints and fully supports the theme of loneliness. Steinbeck makes clear of how every man is lonely at heart by the hardships of life and unchangeable events that occur. This novel’s time period was during the Great Depression, when people were desperate for a new life and went to California for a better life. These people called migrant workers traveled from place to place for jobs and never truly had a happy life. Migrant workers for a lack of a better word were lonely. Steinbeck intertwines this aspect into his novel very strongly. Out of the many themes, loneliness is the most prominent one because it is fulfilled by every character. Steinbeck reveals every character’s weak side to show how someone really is deep down. Not everyone is strong on the outside and stronger on the inside. The full theme for this novel is everyone is lonely from the changeable and unchangeable hardships faced in life. The two characters with the strongest essence of are Candy and Crooks.
Candy is one of the loneliest characters in the story and his hardships sadly cannot be changed. In the story, Candy lost one of his hands while working at the ranch. He looks at himself as a useless and superfluous to the ranch. Candy views his presence as unneeded and himself as cripple after his dog died. He had the dog most of his life and felt the dog was his only friend. After Carlson shot the dog to end its misery, Candy was inundated with misery. As all say, a dog is a man’s best friend. Candy with barely anything to do with one hand feels horrible enough and now his best friend s gone. This unchangeable hardship put Candy extremely lonely with thinking himself as a useless cripple and alone in the world with his best friend gone. Candy is a fairly despondent character who faces his downfalls and absorbs all the emotion to himself from his liabilities in life and the absence of a friend. Candy is the character who...