American Dream

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Jaitej Walia 10K                                                                                             English

Mrs. Christie                                                                      Essay on the American Dream

How Significant is the American Dream in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men? (First draft)

Steinbeck’s theme of the American Dream is very significant to the novel Of Mice and Men, as it was set in America during the height of the Great Depression in 1930’s. George and Lennie’s dream is to have a small farm or a patch of land which they own themselves. It is a dream sufficiently powerful to draw in Candy and temporally, even the cynical Crooks. We know also it is a dream shared by the thousand of itinerant ranch hands.  

        The term ‘American’ is something of which belongs to an ‘America’. Many people were proud to be American and they wanted to be part of America, as it was a young country, and America, the country, has high hopes in being a successful, powerful country. The word ‘Dream’ is something what someone hopes for, and an objective of what someone wants to achieve in their life. So the ‘American Dream’ has people coming from every country and background, but were united by a belief that America would give them opportunities denied them in their native country.

The American Dream was historically significant as many farm workers would share George and Lennie’s dream of a smallholding or small farm, “Someday we’re gonna get the jack together and we’re gonna have a little house and a couple of acres an’ a cow and some pigs”, which shows such an acquisition would allow men such as George to be their own masters and to make a decent, if unspectacular, living from the sweat of their own brows.

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        The American Dream that is most important to Lennie is having rabbits and feeding the rabbits with alfalfa, but he also says that he wants the Classic American Dream, but he actually doesn’t, which is the author’s style of using pathos. All he wants is to, “Live the FATTA the land…an’ have rabbits,” because the only way to do that is for George to get the money for the land, so he follows him, and agrees with everything George says, which shows his child like nature.

George and Lennie both have a dream but are not necessarily the ...

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