LonelinessWhat makes people want to scream or get angry at anyone who tries to talk to them when they are alone? How can prolonged loneliness change a person? In John Steinbeck's novel, Of Mice and Men, several characters face this problem. The story is about two men living in the Salinas Valley during the Great Depression. The two men, George Milton and Lennie Small, travel from ranch to ranch as migrant workers looking for work, having had to leave their previous jobs due to Lennie's trouble with the law. George has made many sacrifices for Lennie, but anything is better than the loneliness they see in the other ranch workers. Steinbeck argues that when people are alone, they become evil and act out of desperation. Being alone causes people to become mean and irritable, those who are prone to loneliness are prone to treating others cruelly and have the need to constantly fight. George realizes this and talks to Slim, another of the ranch workers there, about why he and Lennie are traveling together and how he doesn't want to end up all alone. He tells Slim about the ranch workers he saw passing by at the various ranches and says, “'I saw the guys hanging out on the ranches by themselves. It's not good. They don't have fun. After a long time they become bad. They feel like fighting all the time'” (41). Men who travel alone between ranches have no one to confide in or keep them company, so after a while they get so used to being alone that they just attack people and think everyone is cruel, so there is no point in being nice. Since they have no one to be there for them, they end up arguing with everyone, thinking that the whole world is against them. This idea is demonstrated in Crooks' book. Scammers... half the paper... time. He desperately needs company, so he ends up talking to the only people around. Candy and Curley's wife demonstrate how people act in desperation when they are alone. Through his novel, Steinbeck shows how loneliness can cause people to become hostile and constantly want to fight because they have no one to really talk to, plus they act desperately. because of their loneliness and do things they wouldn't normally do. Loneliness can have terrible effects on people's behavior, but it can be solved. All it takes is a kind and patient friend willing to bridge the gap and put the lonely person out of his misery by giving him someone to talk to and confide in. If those people had someone there for them, they would no longer feel like yelling or getting angry at anyone who tries to talk to them, and they would go back to being happier, more contented people.