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American Dreaming In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

974 Words4 Pages

American Dreaming Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” In the 1930s dreams were hard to achieve because of the depression. In the novella Of Men and Men written by John Steinbeck, the main characters are George and Lennie. George and Lennie are both middled aged men, but the difference is Lennie has a mental disability. They are very close because Lennie's aunt Clara told George to look after him before she died. After their journey in Weed went inadequate George went to look for jobs, but in the time of The Great Depression it was very hard to find anything. Since Lennie has his disability he can't do much without George by his side all the time, or he could do something traumatic. …show more content…

Crooks is a old black guy who takes care of horses. He lives in a small area in the barn it's very dingy and he has few possessions. “...he had books, too; a tattered dictionary and a mauled copy of the California civil code for 1905. There were battered magazines and a few dirty books on a special shelf over his bunk” (pg.67). The majority of the things he has are books, in the era men of color didn't have much literacy which leads the reader to think he wants more for himself. He could become an author or maybe a teacher, considering he has a special shelf just for books. Crooks gets no respect from anyone, he constantly lowers his self esteem because they treat him differently. “Crooks had reduced himself to nothing. There was no personality, no ego-nothing to arouse either like or dislike” (pg.81). The reader can predict that in the time period of of the 1930s white men thought black men's lives meant nothing. They restrained him to doing anything other then watch the horses and they won't even let him go near them. They didn't know his name he was referred to as a “negro”, when they entered his room he was treated with disrespect although it was his room. This justifies that Crooks had dreams like any other person and because he was a colored man in the 1930s he was limited to any dream he

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