Loneliness / Isolation

Question 1

Crooks

Answer 1

• Crooks is physically separated from the other ranch members because of his race.
• This literal isolation makes him angry and bitter towards people when they approach
• Curly’s wife invades his room and he tells her not to “come into a coloured man’s room.”
• he only embraces loneliness for protection and saftey, however it is a vicious cycle,
• ‘I tell ya a guy get too lonely an’ he gets sick’

Question 2

Curley’s wife

Answer 2

• Curly’s wife is only ever thought of in relation to her husband and is never seen by the other characters as someone worthwhile. Evident through her name being the possessive of her husband’s name, and her reputation, ‘tart’
• This isolation and misogyny makes Curly’s wife very lonely
• only woman on the ranch, Curly’s wife is instantly isolated within male society.
• Therefore all power is swept from her hands, the only power remaining being her belief in racial superiority over crooks
• This further demonstrates the effects of isolation on a lonely individual with a bleak hope of a good life.
• The vast amount of isolation experienced by character’s such as Curly’s Wife in this novella portrays the devastating way in which American 1930s society evolved around a discriminatory hierarchy.

Question 3

Lonely nature of itinerant workers

Answer 3

• “Ain’t many guys travel around together,”
• Slim talks about the scarcity of friendship and the lack of trust in society in chapter two.
• Steinbeck is using this scenario to voice the lack of trust in society due to issues like the Jim Crow Laws where a whole community would turn on individuals (most often it was black people).
• Predatory nature of humans