”We'd jus' live there. We'd belong there. There wouldn't be no more runnin' round the country and gettin' fed by a Jap cook. No, sir, we'd have our own place where we belonged and not sleep in no bunk house".
The dream is summed up well by Candy, “Everybody wants a bit of land, not much, jus som’thin’ that was his”. George and Lennie desperately cling to the notion that they are different from other workers who drift from ranch to ranch because, unlike the others, they have a future and each other. However characters like Crooks and Curley's wife serve as reminders that George and Lennie are no different from anyone who wants something of his or her own.
Curley's wife has already had her dream of being an actress pass her by and now must live a life of empty hope. Part of her dissatisfaction with her life is that it can never measure up to her dreams. Her desire for recognition is emphasised by her lack of identity; throughout the novel she remains nameless, known only to the reader as ‘Curley’s wife’. In fact, her dream, just like the American dream of owning a piece of land is polluted and doomed to fail. All dreams, according to Crooks in chapter four, are doomed:
“Just like heaven. Everybody wants a little piece of lan'. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It's just in their head."
George also commented on his lost dream:
"I think I knowed from the very first. I think I knowed we'd never do her. He musta like to hear about it so much I got to thinking maybe we would”
He no longer has a reason to save his pennies. Without a dream, his life becomes sad and meaningless.
Crooks' situation hints at a much deeper oppression than that of the white worker in America, the oppression of the black people. Through Crooks, Steinbeck exposes the bitterness, the anger, and the helplessness of a black American who struggles to be recognized as a human being, let alone have a place of his own. Crooks' hopelessness underlies that of George and Lennie, Candy and Curley's wife. But all share the despair of wanting to change the way they live and achieve something better. Even Slim, despite his wisdom and confidence, has nothing to call his own and will, from what we are told, remain a migrant worker until his death. Slim differs from the others in the fact that he does not seem to want something outside of what he has, he is not beaten by a dream, and he has not laid any schemes. Slim seems to have somehow reached the sad conclusion, that to dream leads to despair.