In Of Mice and Men, what are the functions of the characters, Lennie and George?John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men

Set in the emotionally desolate period of the Great
Depression, George Milton and Lennie Small of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men
exemplify the motif of the fraternity of men, a fraternity which offers
support and friendship and meaning in men's lives in a time of desperate alienation.
Like a refrain to chase away their loneliness, they remind themselves of their
friendship,

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"...We got a future.  We got somebody to talk to
that gives a damn about us.  We don't have to sit in no bar room blowin' in our jack
jus' because we got no place else to go.  If them other guys gets in jail they can rot
for all anybody gives a damn.  But not us.

...because I got
you to look after me, and you got me to look after
you."

When George talks with
Slim in Chapter 3, he tells Slim that men who go around alone all time get mean.  "They
get wantin' to fight all the time."  And, Slim agrees, "They get so they don't want to
talk to nobody."

In contrast to Lennie and George, the
stable buck, Crooks expresses the desperate alienation that he suffers, telling Lennie
that because he is alone, he never knows if what he sees is really there without being
able to turn to another man and ask him whether he is right or not. "He [a man
alone] got nothing to measure by."

Steinbeck himself wrote
of his character Lennie Small,

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"Lennie was not to represent insanity at all but
the inarticulate and powerful yearning of all
men."

This yearning is that
of sharing with others, for meaning depends upon sharing, as Crooks points out.  Meaning
to one's life is what fraternity does provide, and Lennie and George represent this
fraternity.