Common Themes In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

In the novella Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck, there are many themes including the American dream, isolation, prejudice, and man and the natural world. The story focuses on the journey of George and Lennie while they try and work enough to be able to afford their dream of getting a house and land to live on. They have to overcome many obstacles and they meet many people on their way. They eventually meet their tragic fate and have their dreams cut short. The theme of the American dream is developed throughout the novella and is shown by the following examples. George and Lennie have a dream to have their own land with a house, they will live off of the land by growing crops and having farm animals. In the beginning of the story their dream seems just like that, a dream. They don’t have much of a way of

As they’re working to gather the last bit of money they need to buy their house and land, Lennie has another incident just like the one he had before. This time it ended with him accidentally killing someone. Now their dream has been taken from them. As Lennie goes and waits for George at the place they agreed to meet he’s worried that he may not get to do part of their dream. When George arrives he tells Lennie about their dream again and assures him that he can still do what he wanted to do. “We gonna get a little place… We’ll have a cow… An’ we’ll have maybe a pig an’ chickens”(Steinbeck 105). George is only serving Lennie empty words, George knows that the dream can’t be achieved so long as Lennie is with him because Lennie always finds a way to mess it up. For Lennie the dream will always stay a dream because his life ends right after George tells him about the dream one last time. For George, he still has a chance to make something out of the dream since now he may be able to keep a steady job and work long enough to make the money he