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Achieving The American Dream In Of Mice And Men By John Steinbeck

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Achieving the American Dream

"The ideal by which equality of opportunity is available to any American, allowing the highest aspirations and goals to be achieved" (Oxford Languages) is the idea of the American Dream. This idea is exhibited through all walks of life and in many books throughout the height of the 20th century. "Of Mice an Men" by John Steinbeck conveys this very well through the goals of the migrant American worker. In the book George and Lennie must work as ranch hands in the hope of saving up enough money to buy a small farm and work on their own. As the American Dream says itself, achieving it is possible for anyone no matter their mental deficiencies that somebody has or the job they do to achieve it.

The American Dream is obtainable even for people with mental deficiencies like Lennie. Lennie was described as how " he ain't mean, but he gets in trouble alla time because he's so God damn dumb. Like what happened in Weed" (page 41). The only thing in between George, Lennie, and Candy and their dream, was to keep Lennie out of trouble. If more care was taken to keeping Lennie in line, then his altercations with the girl in Weed and Curley's wife later in the story most likely wouldn't have happened. With a little more care, people with mental deficiencies can still accomplish great things. …show more content…

George talks about buying that place from those old folk and says, "If me an' Lennie work a month an' don't spen' nothing we'll have a hundred bucks. That'd be four fifty. I bet we could swing her for that" (page 60). If nothing went terribly wrong, the group of three migrant workers could achieve their dream in just over a month. Even from easily attainable jobs, achieving a dream is well within reach for

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