“Lennie broke in. ‘But not us! An’ why? Because..because I got you to look after me and you got me to look after you and that’s why.’ He laughed delightedly, ‘Go on now George! You got it by heart you can do it yourself!”
George and Lennie use the story as a way to help them get by at times to help both of them get through tough times.
“George’s voice became deeper. He repeated his words rhythmically as though he had said them many times before. ‘Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don’t belong in no place. They come to a ranch an’ work up a stake and then they go into a town and blow their stake, and the first thing you know, they’re poundin’ their tails on some other ranch. They ain’t got nothing to look ahead to.”
“Some day,-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.”
In Chapter three, George and Lennie allow Candy to join in their dream. Candy wants to join them because he knows that he is useless, he has nothing in life to live for and he is also too old. But he is afraid that if he is useless and everyone else knows it, the others will kick him out of the ranch and he does not want that to happen so he tries to join in with George and Lennie’s dream.
“Tell you what...’S’pose I went in with you guys. That’s three hundred an’ fifty bucks I’d put in. I ain’t much good, but I could cook and tend the chickens and hoe the garden some. How’d that be?”
“When they can me here, I wisht somebody’d shoot me. But they won’t do nothing like that. I won’t have no place to go, an I can’t get no more jobs.”
While the ranch-hands never openly discuss their loneliness, Curley’s wife spends most of her time in the novel searching for company. She always looks for Curley around the ranch when she already knows he’s not there.
“I’m tryin’ to find Curley, Slim’ ‘Well, you ain’t tryin very hard. I seen him goin’ in your house.”
She is the only female there; therefore she has no one to talk to and not much company so she flirts with the other men to help her communicate with them which is the only thing she wants, someone to talk to and listen to her.
Curley’s wife thought that she would have everything to live for, after marrying Curley but which it turned out wrong, horribly wrong, she’s with a man who doesn’t even love her and spends a lot of his time without her, especially that all she needs is attention.
“Curley’s wife lay with a half-covering of yellow hay. And the meanness and the planning and the discontent and the ache for attention were all gone from her face.”
Crooks, the negro stable buck, is an obviously lonely character, he does not interact with any other people because of the colour of his skin and he knows everyone will treat him badly because of it. So he is forced to be alone.
Even when Lennie tries to make friends with him, Crooks argues right back at him because of the way he was treated as nothing.
“Lennie smile helplessly in an attempt to make friends. Crooks said sharply ‘You got no right to come in my room. This here’s my room. Nobody got any right in here but me.”
When Crooks was at his childhood, he actually played and was mainly around other white children until their parents told them about the issue and not to mix in with other black children, that is what Crooks wants now, to be accepted.
The impact of the dreams: None of the characters in the novel actually achieve their dreams, despite coming very close on occasions.
George and Lennie try to fulfil ‘The American Dream’ but Lennie soon dies, so George cannot accomplish his dream without Lennie especially as the dream is most important to Lennie, despite these characters coming very close to the dream. When Lennie died, George made sure he died happily with their dream in memory.
“We’ll have a cow,’ said George, ‘An we’ll have maybe a pig an’ chickens… an’ down the flat we’ll have a…. little piece alfafa…”
This is where we see them discussing the dream one last time.
“Lennie begged, ‘Le’s do it now. Le’s get the place now.’
‘Sure, right now. I gotta, We gotta.’
And George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it close to the back of Lennie’s head.”
Curley’s Wife also wanted to be famous, glamorous and to be wanted but she gets accidentally killed by Lennie so she also cannot achieve her dream, but in other words, she is also escaping from a miserable life with Curley.
Candy is also in on the dream with George and Lennie, but when Lennie dies, Curley knows the dream is no more without him.
“Now Candy spoke his greatest fear. ‘You an’ me can get the little place can’t we, George? You an’ me can go there an’ live nice, can’t we, George, can’t we?’
Before George answered, Candy dropped his head and looked down at the hay. He knew.”
John Steinbeck chose to have all the main characters’ dreams come to nothing because that is what life is, especially the serious issues, such as: Women, Black people and People with learning difficulties. He wanted his book to be historically accurate, as well as an accurate portrayal of life itself.
The story was mainly based on the name of the novel from ‘To a mouse’ by Robert Burns, the original lines of ‘The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley.’
