The Role Of The American Dream In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

In Of Mice and Men, a character who endures loneliness is Candy. Throughout the book, Candy is suffering from old age. Around the farm, all he can do is sweep because he lost his right hand in a ranch accident. Candy’s physical disability limits him to making only thirty dollars on the farm.

Of Mice and Men is a very lonesome Novel. Each character has their own style of loneliness and expresses the feeling in several kinds of ways. Throughout John Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men, Loneliness is shown between a couple of important characters such as Lennie, Crooks, and Curley's wife. In the first couple pages, Lennie had been going through flashback of when he was a younger man and his aunt would give him mice to stoke and pet.

Holden’s obsession stems from his fear that he may become a phony one day. So, he spends the book running from adulthood by doing childish things and struggling to keep his life from changing. We see Holden’s fear of phonies shine throughout The Catcher in the Rye. Why does he have this fear?

Of Mice and Men In the 1930’s there were lots of hardships during the Great Depression this made lots of people become unemployed. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck it is a novella released on 1937 which tells a tale of two workers named George and Lennie who lost their old job in Soledad and are going to their new job at the ranch. Largely the ending Of Mice and Men was inevitable because of these following themes; American Dream, cruel society particularly targeting minorities and friendships helping to build empathy. It was inevitable that George and Lennie will never get their own ranch because of the American Dream.

Without a doubt, Lennie’s unquestionable loyalty to George has its repercussions. Late in the book, Lennie is forced to flee after he kills Curley’s wife, and runs to the banks that George told him to go to if he ever got in trouble. George finds him lying there and pretends everything is alright. George says to Lennie, “‘No, Lennie. Look down there acrost the river, like you can almost see the place.’...

This quote explains that George was lying about how Lennie got his disability, just so he can make the boss think that he was not born unintelligent. It reveals that George really wants the job, so he tries to make him and Lennie great candidates for the position. On the other hand, Candy’s dog has been living with Candy for a very long time, but can’t live much longer due to his poor health. When George and Lennie see Candy’s dog for the first time, the author describes him as, “And at his heels there walked a dragfooted sheepdog, gray of muzzle, and with pale, blind old eyes” (24). The dog is characterized as being very old, dragfooted, and having very old eyes.

However he first tells Lennie about their dream, about tending rabbits, living off the land from the crops, and shoots him. Friendship and Loneliness is shown here where George is Lennie’s best friend, and everyone else stays away leaving Lennie alone. Other times in the novel the reader witnesses many other characters face this same factor of isolation. Some examples are,

George tells Slim, “II seen the guys that go around the ranches alone. That ain’t no good”, revealing that he benefits by avoiding their loneliness. He says that he and Lennie “got kinda used to each other” and “it’s nicer to go around with a guy you know.” Also telling Slim how he once used Lennie for fun but he learned his lesson after an incident and “I ain’t done nothing like that no more.”

Dreams are impossible realities fabricated to shadow the actuality of our imperfections however ironically, dreams tend to be made impossible on the consequence of our imperfections. This is one of the harsh realities that Steinbeck expresses in this novel. “ The best laid schemes of mice an men, gang af agley, an lea us nought but grief and pain, for promised joy.” - ‘To a mouse’, Robert Burns. Inspired by the poem, Steinbeck 's novel explores the idea that even the best laid plans, with relevance to our dreams , often go astray due to our imperfections and leave us with nothing but grief in the repercussions from the unfulfilled promises for joy.

Along with the way that Huck treated Jim, Twain made him sound like an unintelligent thing, not a human being but just a thing. There were many problems that Jim faced with Huck and one is specifically pointed out as the reason The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was a racist tale and not one that started to show racial tolerance. During the escape of Jim from Aunt Sally’s house Huck devises a simple plan to get Jim out of the barn safely But then Tom comes along and makes the plan much more complicated and insanely dangerous for Jim. Huck instead of stopping Tom from doing this plan asks him why they should do a complicated plan that might hurt Jim and then decides to revert back to his old self and toy with Jim. After all the morale improvements that Huck has made in the end Jim is still being toyed with instead of treated like the free human being he was.

Of Mice and Men How do you think society handle people who are different? People differently when I moved to Connecticut. Everyone talked about me and did not like me because I’m from Texas. Everyone called me dumb because I did not have the same education as everyone else. People use to say “You’ll never be as smart as me because you are from a dumb state.”

It started going astray in Weed when they were forced to run away and find new work. Their progress was good but Lenny 's desire for soft things ended up stopping one of his small plans of taking care of a puppy and raising it. Even though he was a good worker, he was forced to run when he accidently killed Curley 's wife when he panicked and refused to let go of her hair, when she offered him to pet it. In the end, he was killed and would never live his plan of taking care of rabbits and other soft animals. Candy 's plan of his life was to just work on the farm he was currently at.

Lennie finds, obstacles with Curly so he feels like that may provide some conflict with achieving his goal, as shown by this quote. "I might jus ' as well go away. George ain 't gonna let me tend no rabbits now" (Steinbeck 107). Lennie know that his goal really is almost unachievable now, so he breaks down and realizes that giving up is the easy way out.

As it could be seen, Lennie had to constantly deal with the harsh verbal abuse and sometime physical violence. George knew that his tormenting actions and exploitations were hurting Lennie, yet he continued his ways. On another occasion George could be seen screaming “So you forgot that awready, did you? I gotta tell you again, do I” (Steinbeck )? Why would you maliciously attack the memory of an autistic/mentally handicapped individual?

In order to deal with this, Crooks plans to run away, but the speaker in I, too, Sing America says he 'll grow strong no matter what. And I agree