THEMES

The Predatory Nature of Human Existence

Loneliness is a prevalent theme in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. The novel is set during
the Great Depression in the 1930s, a time of widespread poverty and social isolation. The
characters in the book are mostly itinerant workers, moving from ranch to ranch in search of
employment. They lead a solitary existence, cut off from their families and the rest of
society.The novel portrays various forms of loneliness, such as isolation due to physical
disability, race, and gender. For instance, Candy is isolated due to his age and his physical
disability, which makes him feel useless and unwanted. Crooks, the black stable hand, is
isolated because of his race, and is not allowed to mix with the other workers. Curley's wife
is also isolated due to her gender, as the only woman on the ranch. She longs for
companionship and a better life, but is trapped in a loveless marriage with Curley.

Furthermore, the friendship between George and Lennie highlights the importance of
companionship and the consequences of loneliness. George and Lennie travel together and
work together, and their relationship offers them both a sense of belonging and purpose.
When Lennie accidentally kills Curley's wife, George realizes that their dream of owning a
farm will never come true, and he is forced to make the painful decision to kill Lennie
himself. This moment highlights the loneliness that George will now face without his friend
and the loss of the companionship that gave him a sense of meaning in life.
In conclusion, loneliness is an important theme in Of Mice and Men, and is depicted through
the experiences of the novel's characters. The book shows the effects of isolation and
loneliness on the human psyche, and how important it is for people to have a sense of
connection and companionship in their lives.

In scenes such as this one, Steinbeck records a profound human truth: oppression does not
come only from the hands of the strong or the powerful. Crooks seems at his strongest
when he has nearly reduced Lennie to tears for fear that something bad has happened to
George, just as Curley’s wife feels most powerful when she threatens to have Crooks
lynched. The novella suggests that the most visible kind of strength—that used to oppress
others—is itself born of weakness.

Fraternity and the Idealized Male Friendship

One of the reasons that the tragic end of George and Lennie’s friendship has such a
profound impact is that one senses that the friends have, by the end of the novella, lost a
dream larger than themselves. The farm on which George and Lennie plan to live—a place
that no one ever reaches—has a magnetic quality, as Crooks points out. After hearing a
description of only a few sentences, Candy is completely drawn in by its magic. Crooks has
witnessed countless men fall under the same silly spell, and still he cannot help but ask
Lennie if he can have a patch of garden to hoe there. The men in Of Mice and Men desire to
come together in a way that would allow them to be like brothers to one another. That is,
they want to live with one another’s best interests in mind, to protect each other, and to
know that there is someone in the world dedicated to protecting them. Given the harsh,
lonely conditions under which these men live, it should come as no surprise that they
idealize friendships between men in such a way.
Ultimately, however, the world is too harsh and predatory a place to sustain such
relationships. Lennie and George, who come closest to achieving this ideal of brotherhood,
are forced to separate tragically. With this, a rare friendship vanishes, but the rest of the
world—represented by Curley and Carlson, who watch George stumble away with grief
from his friend’s dead body—fails to acknowledge or appreciate it.

The Impossibility of the American Dream

Most of the characters in Of Mice and Men admit, at one point or another, to dreaming of a
different life. Before her death, Curley’s wife confesses her desire to be a movie star.
Crooks, bitter as he is, allows himself the pleasant fantasy of hoeing a patch of garden on
Lennie’s farm one day, and Candy latches on desperately to George’s vision of owning a
couple of acres. Before the action of the story begins, circumstances have robbed most of
the characters of these wishes. Curley’s wife, for instance, has resigned herself to an
unfulfilling marriage. What makes all of these dreams typically American is that the
dreamers wish for untarnished happiness, for the freedom to follow their own desires.
George and Lennie’s dream of owning a farm, which would enable them to sustain
themselves, and, most important, offer them protection from an inhospitable world,
represents a prototypically American ideal. Their journey, which awakens George to the
impossibility of this dream, sadly proves that the bitter Crooks is right: such paradises of
freedom, contentment, and safety are not to be found in this world.

Fallenness

Drawing on the biblical story of the Fall in which Adam and Eve sin in the Garden of
Eden, Of Mice and Men argues that the social and economic world in which its characters
live is fundamentally flawed. The novella opens by an Eden-like pool that is presented as a
natural paradise. People visit, but they do not own the land and they share its resources
amongst themselves, like the giant sycamore whose low branch is “worn smooth by men
who have sat on it.” The purity of this world in the opening scene proves to be
unsustainable as the story continues. On the ranch, George and Lennie hold on to their
idyllic dream of shared farm ownership, and this dream is compared to paradise when
Crooks scoffs: “Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’.” George and Lennie’s
dream is of a place where “nobody gonna hurt nobody nor steal from ’em.” These paradises
—real and imaginary—are contrasted with the ranch, which is owned by Curley’s father and
is a place of fear and isolation, a place where the workers get hurt and robbed. This contrast
indicates that land-ownership is like Satan’s treachery in the biblical story: it is the act which
destroys innocence and paradise. By the time Lennie finds himself back beside the pool, not
even the Eden-like qualities of the setting can prevent his death.
Freedom vs. Captivity

Of Mice and Men illustrates how working-class people possess little meaningful freedom
and are often held captive by their circumstances. Both George and Lennie feel that the
ranch “ain’t no good place,” but they have to stay because they “can’t help it”; they are
victims of a society that idealizes the American Dream, but doesn’t give people many
options for achieving it. Other examples of the characters’ lack of freedom stem not from
explicitly economic circumstances, but from the harsh nature of life for the disempowered.
Aging and disabled Candy cannot prevent Carlson from shooting his dog, and Crooks, a black
man, can neither get people to visit him in his room nor keep them out. Curley’s wife
suggests she was left with no options besides marrying Curley: “I wasn’t gonna stay no place
where I couldn’t get nowhere.” Most tragically, George is compelled to shoot his friend
Lennie. Curley’s aggression leaves George with a choice between killing Lennie himself or
letting Curley and the mob lynch Lennie. Slim understands that this choice was not made
from George’s own freedom, but rather from the cruel circumstances of life as a poor
migrant worker: “You hadda, George.”

Fear

Most every character in Of Mice and Men lives in fear. As the novella opens, George and
Lennie have just fled from an attempted lynching in Weed, and when they arrive at the
ranch Lennie intuits that it “ain’t no good place” and wants to leave. Candy fears suffering
the same end as his dog, who was killed after Carlson deemed it too old and weak to last.
Crooks fears lynching, a fate that Curley’s wife threatens. Curley fears losing power over the
workers, and almost everyone fears Curley. Curley’s wife says that the men are “all scared of
each other,” and even Slim, who is the most level-headed of the bunch, thinks “ever’body in
the whole damn world is scared of each other.” Of Mice and Men suggests that fear is an
inextricable part of life for oppressed people, and that this fear extends even to their
oppressors. Curley fears losing status so much because he knows his status isn’t earned but
instead comes from his position as the boss’s son. Fear is the price he pays for his ownership
of the land, and this same fear trickles down to everyone who works the land.