Of mice and men
...e and Lennie. Crooks actually states that George and Lennie have got each other but he hasn't got anyone. Curley's wife portrays the same message but under different circumstances. There are really no other main characters besides George and Lennie. From reading the novel and watching the film it is clearly evident in most cases that all of the support characters appear to be lonely. Therefore lonliness is quite a strong and influential theme in the story but it only features as a bakground theme and is not always present at critical stages. Themes such as sacrifice, comradship and freindship feature under very similar circumstances as lonliness but are also evident within the main characters. Candy made a sacrifice when he decided to have his ageing debilitated dog killed. But afterwards he regreted not having killed the dog himself, possibly having killed it at all. Just as when George killed Lennie, he knew it had to be done but he just kept making up excuses to avoid the inevitable. George made that sacrifice but unlike Candy he knew that if Lennie was to be killed he had to do it himself. The issue is morals, if there is such a thing as a moraly correct way to kill somebody thats how George did it, because during that time period in America there was not the resources nor facilities to deal with characters such as Lennie so drastic measures had to be taken. People were very narrow minded during that time period and often only thought of their own safety. George knew that Lennie would be killed anyway by Curly under very violent and tragic circumstances. So George made a decision to kill Lennie himself under the most peaceful circumstances as possible. This is where comradship is evident, George and Lennie were loyal to each other and stood by each other through thick and thin. Frienship can also be linked to the comradship, as, often at times when sacrifice or comradship occurs the theme of friendship arises. The reason for this is that all of these three themes are strongly linked together throughout Of Mice and Men. These three themes combined with hate can even be described as pervasive. Whenever one occurs it can usually be assumed the it will lead to another or possibly two of them in tandem. In my opinion there is only one theme that can be described as pervasive to the story: the pursuit of a dream. Or more correctly the pursuit of an unrealistic dream. This the...