Lennie's dream holds the whole novel together. We hear it at the beginning, when it sounds like fantasy. We hear it in the middle, when it seems likely it may come true, and then we hear it again at the end when everybody's dreams have been shattered. Steinbeck doesn't give the migrant workers unrealistic ambitions but he does show how conditions during the Great Depression frustrated them. This is most clearly shown by Crooks who talks about not only George and Lennie's dream but the dreams of many men at that time for a piece of land of their own.
George’s version of the dream is more centered on the idea of owning land and controlling his life. He wants to live somewhere where nobody has any hold of him. He is aware that while he is working on someone else’s land there is always a slight possibility that he will be ‘canned’. He wants to be his own boss and doesn’t like to rely on someone else. He wants independence. George is the creator of Lennie’s dreams and he shares it in himself although he hopes for it in an entirely different way. He has a concern for Lennie which is another appealing factor of this dream. This is because Lennie is mentally challenged and he can’t do anything for himself therefore, if he did live on his own land then there would be no one to object or run him: ‘”An’ it’d be our own, an’ 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.”’
This dream appeals to Candy from a wholly different angle because he realizes that due to his disability it will not be too long before he is unfit for farm work and eventually thrown out. This urges him to buy land of his own. This dream is more like a compromise to Candy because he is fully aware that that if he does live on a land of h is own he would not be able to work on the land, in this case the idea of security is the most important: ‘Jus’ as soon as I can’t swamp out no bunk houses they’ll put me on the county. Maybe if I give you guys my money, you’ll let me hoe in the garden even after I ain’t no good at it’
Candy is the first to discover the body of Curley's Wife. Subconsciously he is the one that first knows the end of his dream is nigh, "his face was hard and tight as wood". When he looks for confirmation he speaks "his greatest fear". Candy "dropped his head" showing how he has been defeated and destroyed psychologically and spiritually.
Crooks is excluded from the bunkhouse because of the colour of his skin. He is very lonely and wishes that he could either be allowed to connect with the men in the bunkhouse or have friend of his own who would not think his opinions any less worthy just because they came from him. “It’s just the talking. It’s just being with another guy. That’s all.”
He's surrounded by men crippled in some way by society, and he is himself physically crippled, yet he must tend to his own injuries, constantly rubbing ointment into his back. He's constantly segregated, living in an annex of barn, in a room littered with broken imagery, "broken harness… a split collar". He always tries to retain pride, "he kept his distance and demanded that other people kept theirs".
Due to being black Crooks was always bullied and picked on by most of the others. This is why Crooks dream is to be treated like a human and be accepted in society. It's these social boundaries that have kept Crooks lonely throughout his life; the way Candy has to break through an emotional threshold to walk into Crooks' room gives a very small implication that the two "permanent" men could possibly have been companions in different circumstances.
Crooks has a skeptical view of Lennie and George’s dream, he thinks it's "crazy". He says, ""You're nuts" He is scornful, "I seen hundreds of men come by and they all got that same damn thing in their heads." It's clear that his view has developed over time, as Crooks is one of only two men on the ranch that are permanent.
We can also see that he is bitter because he doesn't want people to succeed due to his hard life and his own limited destiny as a black man.
John Steinbeck is probably trying to say that most people’s dreams, even if they do come true, are not always what was expected.
Perhaps Crooks summed up the itinerant workers lives best: ‘Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head.’ For the workers, the simple dream, whether it was real or not, was what kept their hopes up when times were hard.
John Steinbeck makes very good use of dreams throughout the novel. Each character is shown to have greater depth than we might have expected and we are able to see how lonely and disappointed their lives are through the quite humble ambitions that they have. The men just want some sort of security in their lives whereas Curley's wife wants to escape from the boredom and loneliness of being the boss's daughter-in-law.
He attempts to convey the feelings and dreams of the American people at the time it was written. This doesn’t mean that a person who lived in America at that time had these exact dreams, it means that many people in America had this sort of dream. This includes the ‘American Dream’, which many people who were moving to America were hoping for. I think that Steinbeck’s use of dreams is very effective and found it very interesting trying to find the link between the dreams and the mood of the time.
There are three main messages that Steinbeck is portraying in this novel. The first is of the loyalty and friendship which exists between George and Lennie and the rarity of this in 1930’s working man’s America. The second is of the hostile economic environment of America during this period. Thirdly is of the loneliness and isolation which each character experiences and the dream of a better life. The novel also illustrates the importance of moral responsibility, and veracity of social injustice. I believe that this is a reflection of Steinbeck’s thoughts on the subject of the ‘American Dream’ and the false promises of the American government at that time.
