Dreams Alone In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men’s theme concerns the futility of attempting to achieve dreams alone. Multiple characters in the novel aspire to lead lives with unchallenged freedom and the ability to pursue happiness, however when their plans go awry and they are left alone, these dreams are promptly dismissed. Candy is left with no one once his dog is killed reducing him to another lonely farm worker. The idea of working on George and Lennie’s farm not only provided Candy an indefinite job, but opened the opportunity of having companions. Unfortunately, Lennie killing Curley’s wife disrupted these plans, “I could of hoed in the garden and washed dishes for them guys” (Steinbeck 96). Candy knew Curley’s wives death meant that he would once

Crooks is colored and crippled leaving him excluded from the other farmworkers, he is used to solitude and dreams of having a companion. Crooks soon pulls himself out of this impossible fantasy and tells Candy that he didn’t mean what he said, after all “Nobody gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s jus’ in their head” (Steinbeck 74). Perhaps the most tragically doomed dream is George and Lennie’s fantasy of owning a farm that would not only provide them with happiness and freedom, but protection from an uninviting world. George and Lennie both bring up their farm multiple times throughout the novel, “We’ll have a big vegetable patch and a rabbit hunch and chickens. And when it rains in the winter, we’ll just say the hell with goin’ to work, and we’ll build up a fire in the stove and set around it an’ listen to the rain comin’ down on the roof” (Steinbeck 15). They desperately cling to the idea of their farm, but the moment George held the gun against Lennie while reciting what their farm would be like, that dream was