He reveals this theme of friendship through his characters Curley, Crooks, George and Lennie. During these times of stress, characters such as Curley and Crooks turned to selfishness and isolation which resulted in them having miserable and lonely lives. George and Lennie, however, fought against this and ended up as winners because in a world full of isolation, they had someone to care for and someone who cared for them. This theme refers back to the origin of the novel’s title, which was derived from a poem by Robert Burns titled “To a Mouse” . In his poem, he writes
“The best laid schemes of mice and men
Often go awry
And leave us nought but grief and pain
For promised joy!”
The theme of this poem is that no matter how well we plan, unexpected obstacles will interrupt our hopes and dreams which relates to Steinbeck’s theme of broken dreams. After George takes the life of his own best friend to insure he would die happily instead of suffering at the hands of Curley, he loses his chance at his dream. This makes George’s intentions at the end of the book more admirable because he does not continue on with the dream without George. His actions reveal that the dream does not have importance without Lennie and that the real dream is in fact the dream of