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John Steinbeck 's Of Mice And Men

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The word “soledad” directly translates to “solitude” in the Spanish language. Soledad is also town in which Of Mice & Men takes place. The entire novel displays the idea of solitude. Along with the presence of loneliness in this story, John Steinbeck also ties in the idea of companionship through the everyday lives of individuals. The correlation of loneliness and companionship in the lives of these characters, along with the diversion of lifestyles consistently shows. Of all the many themes of the book, Of Mice and Men, the most important theme is the theme of loneliness and companionship. This theme of loneliness and companionship proves most significant because John Steinbeck truly illustrates how vital companionship is to humanity and the residuum of living without it.

The motif of discrimination is portrayed in the book as well as loneliness and companionship and those discriminated against or seen as worthless, are the ones who need companionship the most. Discrimination is very relevant to a couple characters in the book: Crooks and Curley’s Wife. Although these characters are discriminated against, Curley’s Wife isolated for her gender while Crooks is segregated for his skin color. At one point, Lennie innocently enters Crooks ' room which leads to a reasonably long conversation where Crooks finally gets to tell his point of view, “George can tell you screwy things, and it don’t matter. It’s just the talking. It’s just bein’ with another guy. That’s all”

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