It is noted that Mother Theresa once said, "Loneliness is a man's worst poverty." Without friends and companions, people begin to suffer from loneliness and solitude (Dusenbury38). Loneliness is an inevitable fact of life and cannot be avoided, as shown prevalent through each of the characters in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Each and every character in this novel exhibits loneliness. Lennie was isolated for being mentally handicapped, Candy was isolated for being old and disabled, Crooks was for being black, Curley's wife for being a woman, and George for having to care for Lennie and being unable to socialize with others because of Lennie's consistency of getting into trouble from town to town.

The setting of the novel was along the Salinas River, "a few miles south of Soledad." This literally translates from Spanish into English meaning solitude of loneliness. This helps to support the theme...