Motifs For Mice And Men

In the story Of Mice and Men, there were many motifs that stood out to me, but the one that stood out to me the most was the motif of honesty. Throughout the story there wasn’t that much honesty between the characters. So what was Steinbeck trying to tell us? Was he trying to say that nobody in this world is honest and that we all tell lies to get ahead of the person next to you, or was he trying to say that telling a lie hear and there won’t hurt you or nobody around you, or was he trying to tell us that we shouldn’t lie at all and that it will always backfire and something bad will always happen, or was he trying to go all the way back to the lessons we all learned about Lock and Hobb’s opinions on human nature and say that our human nature is naturally bad. Well truthfully I believe that he was trying to say that nobody in this world is ever completely honest and that we all tells lies hear and there, whether to help ourselves or to help the well being of others. In this book many people lie whether to help each other, to hurt each other or to protect each other, the persons behavior in this book is reflected in the lies they tell.
In the begging of the book the bus driver lies and tells Lennie and George that the farm was just a “stretch down the road” when it was actually a long way down the road. He did this not to help them but to help himself and also to hurt them. The bus driver didn’t drive them all the way to them farm because he was too lazy. But he actually helped them because if he would have never lied to them then Lennie would have never knew where to go and hide if something bad happened.
Also, crooks lies to Lennie in the middle of the book, bye telling him that George wasn’t coming back and that something bad happened to him. He did this to hurt Lennie and to feel better about himself. Instead of trying to befriend Lennie so that they both wouldn’t be lonely, he lies to make him unhappy, and so that he can take pleasure in his misery. If he would have never lied, they might have actually both been happy, but then again if the whole book had a happy beginning, middle and end who would want to read it?
In the end of the book, George lied to Lennie to help him, even though he ended up killing him, he wanted him to die with happy thoughts. He lied by telling him that they were going to get the farm and be happy, when in the end he ended up killing him, to protect him. So see George ended up lying to help and protect Lennie and even though what he did was wrong he was right by doing it.
So see there many people who lied in this story for numerous reasons, and I still believe that Steinbeck was trying to show that even though people lied in this story most of them lied for good reasons and for others happiness. I don’t believe that lying makes you a bad person, I think that why you lie is what makes you the bad person, because if you lie, just to lie and just for self interest then that shows who you really are.