In Of Mice and Men, who does George say are the loneliest people in the world?

loves
to listen totalk because George is able to express what Lennie feels but doesn't have the
ability to put into words. In Chapter One, Lennie asks George to tell him the same little bit of
philosophy he has told so many times before that it has become like a poem or a
litany.

Steinbeck uses dialogue asthroughout this work. As in a play, what
the characters say to each other is intended to convey information to the reader. It was
Steinbeck's intention to convert the book into a stage play, and his heavy reliance on dialogue
made the adaptation easy. The play was produced in New York in 1937, the same year the book was
published. When George tells Lennie what he asks him to repeat, Steinbeck is using the dialogue
to convey to the reader, and to the future theater audience, the main message of his
story.

George's voice became deeper. He repeated his words
rhythmically as though he had said them many times before. "Guys like us, that work on
ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place.
They come to a ranch an' work up a stake and then they go inta town and blow their stake, and
the first thing you know they're poundin' their tail off on some other ranch. They ain't got
nothing to look ahead to."

Then in the final
chapter, just before he kills Lennie, George repeats some of the words that his friend loves to
hear.

George said, "Guys like us got no family. They
make a little stake an' then they blow it in. They ain't got nobody in the worl' that gives a
hoot in hell about 'em--"

The story begins and ends
in the same place, partly to suggest that guys like George and Lennie are going nowhere. When
George performs his mercy killing, it is as if he is saving him from a life that offers nothing
but toil and pain. George will be lonelier than ever now without his best friend. Like the other
guys who work on ranches, George "ain't got nothin' to look ahead
to."