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The American Dream In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

583 Words3 Pages

The Stark Reality of the American Dream The American dream is an almost iconic concept that is well ingrained into our culture; it is often a major theme in literature, films, art, and even music. Although the image of a white picket fence and a house in the suburbs sounds likes the stereotypical image most people picture. John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men that isn’t exactly what comes to mind. The general tone of this novella is somewhat melancholic. It’s set dead center of the California dustbowl during the Great Depression. The concept of the American dream strongly influences the plot, progression, and meaning behind the story. The quintessential theme of, Of Mice and Men is the American dream because it teaches the lesson of the reality of the true American dream. …show more content…

This idea is expressed especially when George, Lennie, Candy, and Crooks plotted how they would acquire their ranch. Although George and Lennie are new to the ranch they quickly become acquainted with Candy and Crooks. When Candy overhears George and Lennie talking about the ranch, he tells George that he knows of some land they might be able to afford. He convinces George to let him help them pay for it if he could live with them. This similarly happens with Crooks, he is at first skeptical, but later asks if he could join them in exchange for help with the payment. Steinbeck perfectly sets up this idea so that reader can assume that they all live happily on the ranch in the end, but that’s not what happens. Lennie accidentally kills Curley’s wife which leads to a manhunt for him, that is concluded when George shoots

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George, Lennie, and Candy were about to live their dream out. Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen because Lennie ended up killing Curley's wife. Since Lennie killed Curley’s wife, George had no choice, but to kill Lennie. It was Lennie’s dream to tend the rabbits, but he never got the chance. This is very sad ending to the story because we wanted to know if George, Lennie, and Candy would get the farm.

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In the 1930s with the Great Depression affecting millions of people in America, it was common to see immigrant’s working on agricultural labor. John Steinbeck, a great writer of the 20s, portrays the suffering of what an immigrant agricultural worker went through better than any other writer of the time. Publish in mid 1930s, Of Mice and Men tells the story of two immigrant workers, Lennie and George, and their experience of working in the fields of Salinas Valley of northern California. Throughout the novel Steinbeck vaguely tells the readers, through the protagonist Lennie and George, an unrealistic American Dream. It comes to the question of how far-fetched was George and Lennie’s American dream?

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Characters George and Lennie share the unrealized dream to own a small farm. This does not happen because Lennie’s incompetence to listen to George and his compulsion to touch soft things. Candy’s dream of gaining something tangible after working hard is crushed when Lennie ruins the farm-plan by killing Curley’s wife. Curley’s wife wishes she was an actress away from the grasp of Curley and the ranch. This however, is foolish because as a child she was called a fantastic actor.

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Of Mice and Men, written by award-winning author John Steinbeck, narrates the story of two displaced migrant ranch workers, George Milton and Lennie Small, who travel together from place to place in search of new job opportunities and a chance to achieve their shared dream of settling down on their own piece of land, where they can finally work for themselves. To fulfil their dream, they are given an opportunity to make some well-deserved money by working on a ranch in Soledad, California along with the other ranch hands, who are all trying to make a living for themselves. Life is especially hard for them because the plot takes place during America 's Great Depression, which lasted from the Stock Market Crash of October 1929 until 12 years later when World War II began. But even in America, the land of the free, the land of freedom, the land of opportunity, George and Lennie’s struggle for their little piece of the American dream is frequently emphasised as impossible and unrealistic. Their chances of achieving the dream is lowered dramatically by the problems they run into in Weed.

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George is telling Candy about his and Lennie’s plan once they get enough money from working. Candy wants to help out by putting some money toward the dream of theirs. George continues telling Lennie’s favorite story and the plan once they get the land, “It ain't enough land so we'd have to work too hard. Maybe six, seven hours a day. We wouldn't have to buck no barley eleven hours a day.

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