The Great Depression In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

All of us have had a time in our life when our only way of making it, the only solace we have, is a dream. Our hopes for the future, sometimes so close, we can almost touch, other times, so far away, we can never reach them. During the great depression it seemed like everyone's dreams could never be achieved, to far away to even try, but some held on to these dreams, as their only way to continue, their only way to continue fighting and living. John Steinbeck, author of the short novel Of Mice and Men made this book to show the hardships of people in the great depression. Lennie and george both have the dream of having their own place. At this time this dream was almost unachievable for just about anyone especially someone in Lennie and George's

In this scene Lennie and george are talking by the pond and they share their dreams when he says, “We gon live of the fat of the lan” (14). This shows one of the many American dreams during the great depression that were so hard to achieve. In the middle of the book they all have dreams and share them with each other in the scene Lennie is at the farm and tells the other people there, his dream. Lennie dreams “We gonna have a house and a garden and a place for alfalfa” (89) but because of his disabilities and how nearly impossible it is for the average person he cannot but he still believes . In the first chapter, I think George already knows it won't happen when he is talking about how hard it is to live with Lennie. The scene where george is in the barn after Curley’s wife’s death, he realizes his dreams will never come true; “ I think I knowed we’d never do her. He usta like to hear about it so much I got to thinking maybe we would” (94). This is the character's own realization of the reality of the American dream, it's only a dream. This however was necessary for the two to keep going, they needed a dream to hold on to even if it would never