Of Mice And Men American Dream Analysis

Jason Zhang

Mrs. De Vries

English 9 Honors

28 Nov. 2016

The Impossibility of the American Dream in Of Mice and Men

About 13 to 15 million Americans were unemployed and nearly half of the country’s banks had failed. Suicide rates, which averaged 12.1 per 100,000 people in the decade prior to the Depression, rose to 18.9 during The Great Depression. In the book Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, two protagonists, George and Lennie, are on their way to their new job. It is set during the Great Depression where the stock market crashed and poverty crushed America. George is the alpha male, while Lennie is his follower. Dreaming about a different life may not always go the way you want it to go.

It might be argued that the "American

Lennie’s mind is slower than the average humans’, he has difficulty understanding complex words and making good decisions, and he has a lack of common sense. They want to own their own farm. Whenever George talks about their dream, Lennie imagines it having rabbits and small furry animals to feed and play with. George's dream spreads around and gives some people the same idea of a dream. George will describe this dream to Lennie repeatedly in the novel, Lennie will tell it to others, even when he's not supposed to, and Crooks and Candy will want to join in. “Well,' said George, 'we'll have a big vegetable patch and a rabbit hutch and chickens. And when it rains in the winter, we'll just say the hell with goin' to work, and we'll build up a fire in the stove and set around it an'

His dream is silenced and stopped. He wants to be self-sufficient, able to live a life of his own choosing, yet he also wants to be accepted as he is and treated fairly and equally. He wants to own a farm too, just like George and Lennie. Crooks is called crooks because he was kicked in the back and has a crooked back. “ ‘You told me to warm up tar for that mule’s foot. I got it warm.’ ‘Oh! Sure, Crooks. I’ll come right out an’ put it on.’ ‘I can do it if you want, Mr. Slim.’ ‘No. I’ll come do it myself.’ He stood up.” (Steinbeck chapter 3) This shows that even though he is crippled he is still a hard worker. Because Crooks is black he is still segregated from the others. Crooks lives a fairly isolated life, because of his color. To be equal with everyone else and to own a farm of his own is his American dream. Crooks is black, and this story takes place during the Great Depression, during that time segregation is still a big issue. He can't own a farm because he is black and they doesn’t have the same land owning rights as a white man during the 1930s. It seems that Crooks' dreams die because of the racial segregation that isolated people of color from others. Steinbeck uses Crooks to display how the economic challenges experienced by Americans during the Great Depression were a lot worse for people of color. In the competition for jobs, more white Americans were going to win than their colored