Crooks And Curley's Wife example essay topic

Without a friend or someone to talk to, you'd become awfully lonely; you'd possibly go mad. In John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, loneliness is a significant theme. Crooks, an African-American man who suffers from discrimination due to his skin color, endures intense solitude, for he's denied the privilege to enter and sleep in the bunk house with the rest of the men. Curley's wife, the only female character in the novel, undergoes extreme isolation. She is never given a name, and only referred to as the wife of Curley. She represents a sexual object more than an individual with the same emotions as everyone else.

Both Crooks and Curley's wife experience feelings of ostracism, and they both suffer from the wrath of discrimination. Crooks suffers from severe loneliness due the color of his skin. The unfortunate man undergoes intensely cruel treatment for being an African-American. He had no one to talk to, no one to be with, and no one to comfort him due to his isolation from the rest of the men working on the ranch.

As we see, Crooks displays his anger and frustration when he cries, "You ain't no skinner. They's no call for a bucker to come into the barn at all. You ain't no skinner. You ain't got nothing to do with the horses" (68). He preys upon those under him, so he attacks Lennie, an easy target. He even tries to dictate Lennie when he declares, "Well, I got a right to have a light.

You go on get outta my room. I ain't wanted in the bunk house, and you ain't wanted in my room" (68). He desperately tries to regain his self-esteem by dictating a white man, someone representing the rest of the men who have treated him poorly in the past. He aims to order Lennie to stay out of his room as the rest of the men have done to him in the past, but as he tried to uphold his dignity, he realized he had been in that spot his whole life, enduring the harsh discrimination, and all he ever desired was a friend to talk to.

He exposes his loneliness to Lennie when he gently explains, "Maybe you can see now. You got George. You know he's goin' to come back. S'pose you didn't have nobody. S'pose you couldn't go into the bunk house and play rummy 'cause you was black" (72).

This quote demonstrates Crooks' innermost feelings of seclusion from the rest of the men. At first he attempts to attack Lennie and abuse him because he is weaker than him, but afterwards he realizes he has no one else that would talk to him so he spills out all of the feelings he has kept inside of him to Lennie. As we find out, Crooks isn't the only one who exhibits feelings of being an outsider. Curley's wife, in addition to Crooks, undergoes severe seclusion from the rest of the men working on the ranch.

Steinbeck deliberately creates the negative image of Curley's wife, even depriving her of a name. This so called loo-loo is the only female on the ranch, so consequently she has no other women to chat with. She tries to talk to the other men, but Curley is terribly jealous therefore she consistently has the fear he will catch her. She presents this dread when she constantly questions", 'I'm lookin' for Curley,' she said. Her voice had a nasal, brittle quality... ' He was in here a minute ago, but he went.

' 'Oh!' She put her hands behind her back and leaned against the door frame so that her body was thrown forward. 'You " re the new fellas that just come, ain't ya?" (31). She constantly uses the excuse of looking for Curley when what she really wants is to talk to the men. Like Crooks, she lashes out on those weaker than she is. We witness this when she threatens, "Well, you keep your place then Nigger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain't even funny" (81).

She attacks Crooks because he is black, so his is subsequently lower than she is. This "tart" feels the need to have some authority because the rest of the men so often reject her. Throughout the book we learn her desperate longing for someone to talk to other than Curley. Eventually she resorts to Lennie whom she'd normally have nothing to do with, but due to her isolation, and her rejection of Crooks, Lennie is her last hope. She reveals her desperation when she asks in frustration, "Why can't I talk to you? I never get to talk to nobody.

I get awful lonely" (86). Curley's wife finally becomes aggravated when Lennie, whom she expects to talk to her because he's weaker than she is, denies her the satisfaction of conversing with her. She finally becomes so desperate she lets her guard down and allows Lennie to stroke her hair, which eventually leads to her death. Hence, the severe discrimination of both Crooks and Curley's wife finally prosper in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Despite their endless craving for a friend, when someone finally comes along who is willing to talk to them, they shun them away trying to regain some dignity, instantly forgetting what their ultimate goal is.

After everything is said and done, and once you have no one left, in the end you will always regret those choices you made. No matter what skills you have, how good-looking you are, or how nice you are, without a friend to share it with, everything is worthless.