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

Jeon 2
Min Hee Jeon
Entry #1: The American Dream The setting of Of Mice and Men—Salinas, California in the 1930s—conveys that the characters in the novel are representations of the migrant workers in that time period. To escape the arid farmlands, the itinerant workers went in search for work in the land of promise, California. However, they faced limited opportunities and poorly paid lives, which gave way to the seducing American dream. All the workers hoped for was a piece of their own land similar to that of George and Lennie's. Ultimately, as the ideal dream, it conforms to the American dream of liberty and pursuit of happiness.
George and Lennie's dream of "‘[living] offa the fatta the lan'" (Steinbeck 57) is repeatedly emphasized throughout the novel, which shows that the American dream played a huge role during the 1930s. George and Lennie constantly migrate from place to place in order to chase after their desires. Just as the American Dream gave hope and motivation to those who faced adversities during the 1930s, the dream essentially acts as a remedy with its assurance of attaining opulence by reinvigorating George, Lennie, and the marginalized men on the ranch. George vividly delineates the infeasible dream by saying that there will be no authority over them and that they will own a variety of

While a reader might argue that the men wanted to get rid of the dog because the dog was suffering, the men in fact desired to shoot the dog for the sake of themselves, not for the dog's misery. Disregarding Candy's affection toward the dog, they pressured Candy to let them shoot the dog. Carlson constantly kept insisting that if they shot the dog in the back of his head, "‘he'd never know what hit him'" (45). The ranchers' rapacious nature turns the intentional mercy killing into a