Loneliness is often compared to feeling empty, unwanted, and unimportant. In my lifetime, I’ve met and currently know people that feel lonely. It is also very important to know the difference between feeling lonely and actually being alone. To feel lonely is what I believe, only an emotion. Feeling lonely is a lot less drastic than actually being lonely. For example, you could just be sitting at home, watching TV, eating by yourself, and feeling lonely. Loneliness being an emotion, I think you have the ability to change this. It’s equal to saying “I’m hungry…. So I think I’m going to go get food.” Or, “I’m tired… so I’m going to get some sleep.” Instead of sitting around at home, you can leave, and hang out with friends or family. You can do something about being lonely.

Being alone however, is something that’s a little harder to change. When you have someone or something you’ve depended on for a while to make you happy, and that’s taken away from you, aloneness would suddenly be felt. Other causes can be distance away from family or friends, and not having anyone to talk to or trust. Everyone in their lifetime, at one point, has experienced being alone. I think the time where this mostly happens are your teen years.

These are the years where we’re trying to figure ourselves out, and many things around us can cause us to think that we’re alone. Also, most teenagers try so hard to conform in an environment, and soon as they’re not accepted, loneliness occurs. Peer pressure is everywhere around us when we’re teenagers. It can happen at school, at our jobs, and sometimes even at home, trying to please our parent’s expectations. Besides this, I believe that it’s possible to enter a room full of people and still feel like you’re all by yourself. When you’re already lonely enough, it is possible to look around and feel like everyone is better than you.

John Steinbeck portrayed this kind of loneliness in his book, Of Mice and Men. Even though the main theme of this story was how “impossible” the American Dream is, there were also constant hardships and loneliness all throughout the Great Depression, which is what this book is based on. During this literary period, it also proves that loneliness affects almost anybody, rich or poor. This has been carried through the years.

I found a book I came across with while researching on this literary period, called Riding the Rails. This was a book all about the teenagers during the Great Depression. They ran away from their homes looking for a better life. These teenagers left because they thought they were some kind of burden on their parents. This proves exactly what I mentioned earlier. If there was anyone that could be easily affected by this state of loneliness, it would have been the teens.