The first time we hear about their dream is while they are resting in a clearing by a river before starting work at the nearby ranch. This is also where we see a side of Lennie’s character that is not so simple, because he uses emotional blackmail to get the initially reluctant George to talk ‘About the rabbits’ (p31) which is Lennie’s way of describing the dream. After unleashing some of the frustration he feels at being responsible for Lennie, and then feeling guilty for it, Lennie ‘sensed his advantage’ over George and ‘craftily’ (p31) forces the conversation round to his favourite subject. So although Lennie is portrayed as being totally dependent on George, the way a child is on its parent, he is also able to get his own way as well, like children can. Also, like children do, Lennie is quick to pick up on the bad atmosphere at the ranch, but he almost senses his own fate when he says:
‘I don’t like this place, George. This ain’t no good place.
I wanna get outa here’ (p55)
When the characters are talking about their dream farm, I think Steinbeck is already hinting at the hopelessness of it becoming a reality by giving it a fairy-tale quality. George’s voice changes and ‘He repeated his words rhythmically as though he had said them many times before’ like a well-known bedtime story for a child. This feeling is reinforced by Lennie reciting his favourite bits, as if he has learned them off by heart and ‘He laughed delightedly’ (p32).
Steinbeck is really referring to ‘the American Dream’ when George and Lennie discuss their dream. This was a belief that every American citizen, no matter who, could eventually own their own piece of land, or their own home, if they worked hard enough for it and made the right sacrifices. The problem was that in reality over farming and climactic changes in the west of America had turned a huge piece of fertile land that supported the early settlers into a great dust bowl. These early settlers had established the sort of small farms that represented the ‘promised land’ to workers like George and Lennie, and they were now being forced to leave and look elsewhere for a living. In other words, the dream was crumbling and the kind of place George and Lennie dreamed of was already gone.
For people like George and Lennie, the dream of owning their own farm was just wishful thinking. It was a way of comforting themselves against the loneliness of their lives. It was a cosy picture from childhood of a time when there was shelter and warmth:
‘And when it rains in the winter, we’ll just say the hell with goin’
to work, and we’ll build up a fire in the stove and set around it
an’ listen to the rain comin’ down on the roof.’(p33)
The dream offered them some control over their lives at a time when they were actually powerless and always living with the threat of getting ‘canned’ and this made life more bearable:
‘An’ it’d be our own, and nobody could can us. If we don’t like a guy
we can say: ‘Get the hell out,’ and by God he’s got to do it.’(p86)
Despite George’s self-discipline though, like saving his money instead of blowing it on the usual things like whiskey, cards and women, and his potential to organise it because he’s experienced enough at ranching, we know it’s not going to happen. Steinbeck makes it more and more obvious that its just a dream, for example when Crooks tells Candy to forget his offer of coming along with them, even though even he had got caught up in the dream for a minute. He goes back to being disillusioned because he knows ‘Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody never gets no land.’(p106).
Even Candy’s compensation money that seems to make the idea real isn’t going to make it happen. This is because Steinbeck has built up a slow progression over the course of the book, from dead mouse to dead girl, that seals Lennie’s fate. He hasn’t been able to learn from any of his mistakes along the way and we begin to realise that the end is inevitable. This is what Steinbeck means by the title of the book. Even the best laid plans ‘Of Mice and Men’ can and do go wrong. Despite everything they had going for them, it wasn’t enough in the end. Once George takes on the humane responsibility and kills Lennie rather than let Curley and his mob get him it’s all over, and the dream dies with him.
1053 Words.
