Dreams In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

Dreams are something that everyone has. They drive people to do great things and make their dreams come true, however, there are some dreams that never come true. The book, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, follows the story of Lennie and George, two migrant workers, who come to a ranch looking for work. On this ranch, George and Lennie meet many other people, and throughout the story many people's dreams are revealed. Through the characters Lennie, Candy, and Curley’s, wife Steinbeck shows that dreams impact how a character acts and can also give that person a purpose whether it is negative of positive. To begin with, Lennie’s dream is to buy a place with George and Candy where he is able to look after and care for the rabbits. This causes

One example of this is after Lennie gets in a fight with Curly. He becomes worried that George will not let him care for the rabbits, “I can still tend the rabbits, George?”(Steinbeck 65). This shows that Lennie has become worried that he will lose his privilege of tending the rabbits due to hurting Curly in the fight, so he checks with George to make sure that he is in the clear. Lennie is being controlled by his aspirations since, instead of worrying about the aftermath of hurting Curly, he jumps right to the conclusion of how this will impact his goal. This reveals that Lennie’s real focus is simply to be able to maintain his goal since he doesn’t seem to care what happens around himself as long as it results in him caring for rabbits. Another example of Lennie being focused on his end goal is when he accidentally kills his puppy: “Why do you gotta killed? You ain’t so

This is first shown in how Candy reacts to George telling him about his and Lennie’s plan when Candy responds with, “S’pose I went in with you guys. That's three hundred an’ fifty bucks I’d put in”(Steinbeck 59). This shows how immediately after hearing that George and Lennie are saving up to buy their own place, Candy offers to put a great deal of money in if he can join them. This reveals that Candy has been focusing on any opportunity like this to get a place that he can call his own since Candy acts without hesitation by offering to help them. These actions build up to the fact that Candy’s focus is to feel secure in a place with people that he can trust as shown when he says, “Something’ he could live on and there couldn’t nobody throw him off of it”(Steinbeck 76). This reveals that Candy’s dream is to not be able to be kicked out of somewhere for once since he is afraid the he will lose his job and have nowhere to go, and explains why Candy has become so focused on helping George and Lennie achieve their dream in exchange for a place that he can call home. Candy is someone who is used to knowing people who go from job to job without having a real goal, so of course, when he meets George and Lennie who plan to get their own place, he would