Crime
One cannot talk about the iconic American bank robbers, Bonnie and Clyde, without talking about crime. Over the course of the film, we become acquainted with two young people who turn to crime as a way to feel more connected to the world around them, to feel the rush of experience and significance. When he first meets her, Clyde Barrow can sense in Bonnie Parker a kindred personality, an appetite for transgression. The two criminals are not depicted as explicitly evil characters, but rather as bored and restless youths, searching for a way to make their lives more exciting. What starts as simple petty crime soon becomes more serious, when they get in deeper with bank robbery and have to start killing people. Bonnie and Clyde are glamorous criminals, committing crimes in order to bankroll a life of excitement and notoriety.
Sex
What is notable about Bonnie and Clyde is not only that they enjoy committing crimes together, but that they are sexy, young, and magnetically attracted to one another. The first scene, in which Bonnie notices Clyde stealing her car while getting dressed in her bedroom, is undeniably fueled by the sexual chemistry between the two leads. In this way, their sex appeal and attraction to one another becomes entangled with their desires to break the law, and fuels their criminal collaboration.
Complicating matters is the fact that, while wily and excitable, Clyde is impotent, and cannot seem to make it work with Bonnie sexually. This is a problem that haunts them throughout the film, until they speak candidly to one another at the end and they finally consummate their relationship. In Bonnie and Clyde, sexual attraction and the thrill of law-breaking are conflated and aligned.
Fight the Man
Bonnie and Clyde justify their unlawful actions by suggesting that they are taking from institutions, not people in need. When they rob banks, Clyde suggests that they are taking from the haves, rather than the have-nots, and this is an important ethical distinction for him. At one point, they rob a bank and come across a man who is depositing money. Clyde asks him if the money belongs to him or the bank, and when the man says it is his, Clyde lets him keep it. This shows that Bonnie and Clyde are not interested in taking money from just anybody, but in taking money from an institution that maintains the inequality of the economic system at large, and conceive of their crimes as a kind of ethical redistribution of resources.
Fame & Being Remembered
Another motivating factor in Bonnie and Clyde's law-breaking is their desire to become famous. One of the ways that Clyde appeals to Bonnie and convinces her to join his project is by promising that he will help her escape her hum-drum life as a waitress and become someone who is remembered by history. At the end of the film, when they are being hotly pursued by the authorities, Bonnie writes a poem about their exploits and it gets published in the paper. When Clyde reads it, he says to Bonnie, "You know what you done there? You told my story, you told my whole story right there, right there. One time, I told you I was gonna make you somebody. That's what you done for me. You made me somebody they're gonna remember." Here, we see that more than anything, the couple wants to be remembered, they want to eke out some sense of meaning in their lives, and a sense that history will remember them.
Death
Death creeps into the film slowly. While much of it is comic and lighthearted, as Bonnie and Clyde get more deeply entrenched in their lives of crime, they begin having to kill people, which heightens the stakes. Some of these deaths are shot in an almost comic way, but eventually, the violence catches up with them, and it takes a more tragic tone. This is especially true at the shootout at the cabin, in which Buck is mortally wounded, and Blanche is shot in the eye. Suddenly death seems much more real to the band of unencumbered twenty-somethings. In the final scene of the film, Bonnie and Clyde are gunned down by the police in a horrifying and extended display, a graphic depiction of violence that shocked viewers in 1967. The tragic end of the film is an untimely death for the two young characters, and the viewer is led to see that what started as harmless fun and mischief got out of control fast, and ended very badly.
Freedom
Bonnie and Clyde are notoriously good at evading the authorities and maintaining their freedom, which stands out as a thematic motif in the film. Every time the viewer thinks they might be apprehended, they manage to wriggle free, and a motivic rousing banjo riff plays to signify that they got out just in time and the fun continues.
Ironically enough, the more crimes they commit, the less free the criminals become. Even though Clyde promises to set Bonnie free from her life in Dallas, he actually ends up confining her to a life on the run. The open road might feel like freedom, but the authorities are at their heels, and the more they fight for freedom, the more certain their deaths become.
Family
When the going gets tougher and tougher, Bonnie becomes homesick and wants to visit her mother. The group goes and Bonnie tries to make plans with her mother, but Mrs. Parker has given up on her daughter, and insists that Bonnie needs to run from the law if she wants to survive. Bonnie is deflated to find that her mother doesn't approve of her reckless behavior. While she feels that she's made something of herself, Mrs. Parker perceives her daughter to have ruined her future.
Later, the group goes to Moss' father's house. While Mr. Moss acts as though he approves of Bonnie and Clyde, he ends up convincing C.W. to help him give up their location to Frank Hammer, and helps in staging their gruesome deaths. He disapproves of C.W.'s having fallen under their influence, and berates his son for having gotten a chest tattoo.
In Bonnie and Clyde, families and parents are disapproving and judgmental. As a result, the young characters must band together and create their own sense of family. The only supportive familial relationship in the film is between Buck and Clyde, but their loyalty to one another only ends in death.
