Of Mice And Men Is A Novel About Dreams And Hopes In Difficult circumstances: Dreams And Hopes That Were Bound To Be Frustrated. Explore This Theme

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Of Mice And Men Is A Novel About Dreams And Hopes In Difficult circumstances: Dreams And Hopes That Were Bound To Be Frustrated. Explore This Theme

Steinbeck’s novel “Of Mice and Men” is set in California in the 1930’s. At this time in America it was the Great Depression. Many people had lost everything and poverty was high. Therefore, many men worked as itinerant workers. George and Lennie, the two main characters, were itinerant workers. It was there dream to own a small piece of land and settle down, this is known as the American dream. Crooks says all workers on the ranch have the same dream, “ Seems like ever’ guy got land in his head”

They are all craving for something – in the case of George and Lennie, that something is land. They are not the first travelling ranch hands to conjure up images of their own land, or of being their own bosses. This dream is similar to the “Great American Dream”, that you can achieve anything if you have the mind and desire to do it. Dreams are simple things in some ways, yet amazingly complex in others. Although we are not told this part of the story, imagine when George and Lennie first came up with their very own dream, and in fact it was “The Great American Dream”. George was probably rambling on, as people seem to do around Lennie (take, for example, Crooks when Lennie goes into his room at night). What was just a simple thing to George, something to while away another couple of minutes on the way to another ranch, became something of a fixation to Lennie. After repeating it to Lennie as a bedtime story, maybe he eventually came to believe it himself.

George and Lennie and their acute dream was a simple one – they wanted land to call their own. Candy sums the feeling up well:

"Everybody wants a bit of land, not much. Jus som’ thin’ that was his."

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Crooks has also seen it all before:

"I seen guys nearly crazy with loneliness for land, but every time a whore-house or a blackjack game took what it takes."

George’s dream, although extremely similar to Lennie’s, is probably more detailed and complicated. Lennie thinks as far as "tending the rabbits", but George has to worry about whether it would be possible to really "live offta fatta of the land", or would they starve?

Lennie, with his child-like mentality, believes whatever he hears, so when George tells him that they will really get their own land, he believes ...

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