In the novel George and Lennie appear different to the other ranch hands because they stay together, what ever they decide to. The main reason for this is because Lennie has a mental age of a young child and not able to look after himself properly so George looks after him. Despite Lennie being confused easily he is sure of his friendship “ain’t nobody goin’ to no hurt to George. ” This shows the Lennie is very protective of George and will not let anything bad happen to him.
They all so share a dream, a dream of owning their own piece of land and to live of the fat of the land and not have to depend on anyone. The ranch that George and Lennie go to is called Soledad. Soledad is the Spanish word for loneliness. The ranch itself is very isolated. We get this feeling because we never leave the ranch as readers; we only get told about the men going into town. When Curley’s hand gets hurt in the fight he has with Lennie, we do not see him go to the doctors, but just hear about it “Carlson’s gonna take you to a doctor. So because of this it gives us the feeling that the doctors and the main town is far away from the ranch.
The workers on the ranch are solitary and always on the move. We know this because when George and Lennie first come to the ranch, Candy, an old swamper shows them to the bunkhouse and tells George that the man that had this bed before him left “he…just quit, the way a guy will. ” George and Lennie are found unusual by slim one of the ranch hands because they travel around together instead of on their own like everyone else.
Everyone is passing through the ranch, all except Candy and Crooks. This is because Candy is old and only has one hand and crooks, stays on the ranch because he is coloured. Both of them know if they were to leave the ranch they would not have anywhere to go and they probably would not get a job on a different ranch. Both candy and crooks will stay on this ranch until they become too much trouble for the owner and are forced to leave.
When the men get paid at the end of the month, they all go into town except Lennie crooks and candy they have a few ahcolh drinks and then pay women for their company. This shows that the men have no one perment in their lives wife, children ect and to make themselves fell better about being on their own the pay women. When we first meet Curley’s wife, she looks like a prostitute as she has “rouged lips and wide-spaced eyes, heavily made up. Her fingernails were red… She wore a cotton housedress and red mules, on the insteps of which were little bouquets of red ostrich feathers”.
Even some of the ranch hands think this “well I think Curley’s married …a tart. ” This shows that Curley’s wife has flirted with some of them. All this shows that she is trying to stand out from everyone and everything including the ranch itself, as she is the only woman that we see it gives us the feeling that she has no one to talk to as all the men work and is very lonely indeed. Whenever she gets the chance to talk to o the men, she flirts with the as much as she can, just to make sure they notice her.
The men will try to avoid her as much as they can this is only because she is married to the bosses son Curley and most of the men are not so much scared of Curley himself but are scared in case they get ‘caned’ lose their job. This isolates her even more, but she is aware of how the men are treating her. She is always going into the bunck house ‘looking for Curley’. This shows that she is bored and wants something to do, someone to talk to. “Think I don’t like to talk to somebody every once in a while? Think I like to stick in that house alla time? This shows us that all she wants to do is talk to somebody and get out of the house, as she is not a trophy for Curley to show off but an actual human being. We learn that Curley’s wife also has a dream. Her dream is that she could have been a film star actress. This dream isolates her again, because in realality she is lonely and her dream is unattainable. John Steinbeck based his novel in the 1930’s depression. When migrant works flooded the Californian states in search of work. It has been said that the main charters in the novel are a “symphony of loneliness. “
