Breaking the Loneliness In John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, loneliness is one of the many underlying themes that is expressed in the novel through many of its characters. Some of the factors of this human isolation are age, sexism and racism. Despite the on-going struggle to prevent its occurrence, loneliness is also a feeling a large number of people experience from day to day in our society. In the novel, Candy is a lonely and disabled, elderly man who feels isolated from the rest of the younger workers on the ranch. Candy knows that society rejects seniors such as himself because they are stereotyped as