The desire to better themselves is something that has driven mankind long before the birth of the American Dream. In 1831, the British scientist, Charles Darwin was taken aboard the ship HMS Beagle and sailed to the Galapagos Islands, where he observed that each island supported their own type of tortoise, mockingbird and finch. The forms were closely related but differed from island to island with different eating patterns and structure. An idea began to form in Darwin’s mind of the possibility of links between similar species.
Darwin’s theory of evolution is that because of the food problem, the young born of any species tends to compete for survival. The young that survives to produce the next generation will have children with favourable characteristics which will be developed and passed on through hereditary. Therefore each generation will improve and adapt over the preceding generations and this gradual and continual process is the source of the evolution of the species.
Darwin also said that humans themselves are just monkeys that have evolved. We have a natural instinct to be better than other humans. We compete for survival. This is referred to as survival of the fittest.
Because of Darwin’s views, Survival Of The Fittest became a prominent theme in the novel. To survive in Lennie and George’s world, a person would have to be hardened and capable to survive. Lennie is big and strong but he is not intelligent and cannot cope by himself. When George tells Lennie that he would have a better life without him, Lennie says, “I could go off in the hills there. Someplace I’d find a cave. George asks him how he would eat so Lennie replies, “I’d find things, George. I don’t need no nice food with ketchup. I’d lay out in the sun and nobody’d hurt me. An’ if I found a mouse, I could keep it. Nobody’d take it away from me.” Despite what he’s saying, both George and the reader know that if Lennie didn’t have George to look after him, then he wouldn’t survive.”
Lennie is often compared to animals. On page 5, it says that Lennie dabbled his “big paw” in the water. Lennie is “Like a terrier who doesn’t want to bring a ball to its master,” on page ten. This is emphasised even more because of the numerous references to animals throughout the first chapter. When John Steinbeck is setting the scene on the first page, he refers to the rabbits who “come out of the brush to sit on the sand in the evening” and “the night tracks of ‘coons.”
George however, is the opposite of Lennie, being small and quick. Despite his form, he seems more able to survive in the world he lives in.
This leads on to the theme of The American Dream. At the very beginning of the novel, as John Steinbeck is setting the scene on the first page, he mentions the Gabilian mountains and in the way he describes it, he seems to draw comparisons with the American Dream. He states that the “golden foothill slopes curve up to the strong and rocky Galibean mountains. We can see the Gabilian mountains as a metaphor and that like the American Dream, it is a long uphill struggle to reach the top. Similarly when the sun goes down on the mountains, Steinbeck refers to the “flame of the sunset lifted from the mountains” and “a half darkness came in among the willows and the sycamores.”
The American Dream is symbolised yet again on page six, with the bus driver who drops Lennie and George off a long way from where they are intending to go. The bus driver apparently said, “Jes’ a little stretch down the highway.” Even though he is referring to the trip to the ranch, he might as well be referring to the American Dream as that is what someone could think it is, that it is not very far to reach the top.
Lennie and George’s relationship forms the basis of the novel. Their friendship is very solid. They obviously have a father-son relationship as the first time we see him, George chastises Lennie for drinking the water, “Lennie, for God’s sake don’t drink so much.” George protects Lennie and makes sure he survives. Lennie looks up to him and does everything he does, so that he does not do something wrong, as on page five where it says, “Lennie, who had been watching, imitated George exactly.”
However, even in George and Lennie’s relationship there is some sort of a pecking order. George sees himself as superior to Lennie, which is made obvious when George walks in front of Lennie on page four. George is more clever than Lennie and he makes this fact very apparent. He tells Lennie not to talk, as he will do all the talking for him. Lennie does not quibble this but instead says, “I...I ain’t gonna...say a word.”
When George suspects Lennie of having a mouse in his pocket, he reprimands him and makes him hand it over, with George saying, coldly, “You gonna give me that mouse or do I have to sock you?”
Lennie acts like a naughty child in this scene, when he says, “I wasn’t doin’ nothing bad with it, George. Jus’ strokin’ it.” He likes things he can pet but George reminds him of the times he killed the mice his Aunt Clara gave him.
Lennie protests that this was not his fault, when he says, “They were so little. I’d pet ‘em and pretty soon they bit my fingers and I pinched their heads a little and then they were dead- because they were so little.” This is the first sign of violence in the book. Also, it foreshadows that something bad will happen, connected to Lennie’s love of petting things.
Foreshadowing is a technique used throughout the first chapter to point you to things that will happen in the story. On page 13, George reminds Lennie of the time he felt a girl’s dress, “How the hell, did she know you jus’ wanted to feel her dress? She jerks back and you hold on like it was a mouse.” This tells you that Lennie is going to get into trouble because of petting something.
Also, when George tells Lennie to hide in the brush till he comes for him if he gets into trouble, we know that Lennie is going to get into trouble and will have to hide in the brush eventually.
John Steinbeck raises many themes in the first chapter of his novel and he uses effective methods to do so.
