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John Steinbeck is a man on a mission: He’s going to expose the American dream as a lie, and Americans themselves as predators. In Of Mice and Men, it’s more than just a theme. It’s a crusade. George and Lennie help Steinbeck drive home his point: Whatever anybody might tell you, it’s every man for himself.

Video Transcription:

It’s hard to talk about one theme in Of Mice and Men without talking about several. Up next, I’ll untangle those themes for you—and give you the skinny on Steinbeck’s message.

If you watched Recap 4, you know that the characters in this book are Steinbeck’s slaves. What I mean is, he makes them work for him. Their actions and interactions support his themes.

See, the guys who work at the ranch are kind of like a fraternity. Sometimes they’re friends; sometimes they’re enemies. They drink together; they pick up pretty girls together.

Some of the guys even fall for George’s dream of owning a farm. They want to work there, too. That would be, like, an even cooler fraternity, they think, because on the farm there would be no loneliness and there would always be someone watching out for them.

So that’s theme one: The bond of brotherhood. Except it’s an idealized bond, really, because it’s based on a dream.

And that’s where themes two and three come in. Because Steinbeck didn’t really believe that kind of brotherhood could ever exist in this world. After all, human existence is predatory (theme two) and the American Dream is for suckers (theme three).

As if to prove Steinbeck’s point, by the end of the story, the bonds between the ranch hands have disintegrated, leaving them with no brotherhood, no dreams … and you, the reader, with a pretty clear idea of Steinbeck’s message.