Of mice and men
Discuss the importance of dreams of the various characters in Of mice and men. Do any of these characters have a realistic opportunity to realise their dreams?
Of mice and men is a novel written by John Steinbeck set in the 1930’s. John Steinbeck was born on the 27th February 1902 in Salinas, California. Of mice and men mainly focuses on loneliness and isolation. I will have to consider the importance of dreams of various characters in Of mice and men and do they have a realistic opportunity to realise their dream.
Many of the characters have dreams in this novel, big dreams, wild dreams all sorts of dreams but I am only going to talk about the following characters: George and Lennie, Curley’s wife, and Candy.
George and Lennie share a dream of settling in a farm house and looking after animals and doing what any other people would do. During the story their dream is also shared by candy known as the ‘swamper’. I think that if Lennie and George didn’t have a dream, they wouldn’t have had the enjoyable time in their lives that they had even though Lennie was a big problem to George. If they never shared the same dream, I think that George would have left Lennie when the first time Lennie caused a problem. But one reason that George continued to stay with Lennie is because George knew that Lennie on his own would get into trouble and eventually die. George also knows that if he leaves Lennie, he is going to become a lost and a awful person, George says “I seen the guys that go around on the ranches alone. After along time they get mean. They get wantin’ to fight all the time”. From this we know that George wouldn’t want to leave Lennie because what could happen to him, he is scared of the bad things that could happen to him so he needs to have a companion, and that is one way to achieve the goal of their dream.