Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men involves many themes to show every aspect of the American Dream, which is introduced in the beginning of the novel while George speaks with Lennie. The reasons for dreaming, what is dreamed about, and ultimately who can achieve this dream all contributes to the main issues of the novel. Many of Steinbeck’s characters come close to realizing this dream but because of the external conflict are unable to ever attain it. Through the foreshadowing throughout the novel the reader understands that George and Lennie will not likely achieve their dream no matter how hard they try. There are many themes in the novel but the main ones deal with loneliness, survival of the fittest, and the dream of owning land.
Human beings as a race almost always seek companionship and abhor loneliness. Steinbeck uses Crooks and Curly’s wife to illustrate how humans react to separation and isolation. They both exemplify what can stem from the desperate need for human companionship. They react to this separation differently, however, Crooks drawing into himself and Curly’s wife becoming what Candy calls a “tart”. Although Curly’s wife in many ways represents Eve and the downfall of George and Lennie, Steinbeck wants the reader to sympathize with her as a character because of her isolation in her marriage with Curly and the failure of her “American Dream” of becoming an actress, however unrealistic that dream was. Her loneliness is apparent when she says “Think I don’t like to talk to somebody ever’ once in a while? Think I like to stick in that house alla time?” The failure of her dream is what causes her to act in such a desperate manner and really creates sympathy for her as a person. Fear of loneliness is one of the main reasons George keeps Lennie around. He says in the first chapter of the book: “Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliness guys in the world. They got no family. They don’t belong no place… With us it ain’t like that. We...