Dreaming In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

Explore how dreams and dreaming affect individual characters in the novel. Remember to consider how the American Dream is represented in your answer.

In the novel most of the characters have a dream. Each of the characters seem to have a sense of loneliness in each of their lives and their dreams are the things that keep them hoping for something better than their lives on the ranch.

Lennie’s dream for one is based on his childlike personality, he wants to be with George and ‘tend to the rabbits’. At every point in the novel where he believes his dream will be compromised you see him fill with rage and throw a tantrum like a child would. When something goes wrong his brain comes back to the rabbits and how he can’t bear to loose his dream, this drives him to try and cover up or runaway from his wrongful acts. Lennie’s dream
Moving onto George, at first it seems his dream is based on leaving Lennie to live his life as he chooses but as the novel progresses it becomes clear that he shares a dream with Lennie. This would be to ‘have a little house’ and ‘live off the fatta the lan’ and in this dream Lennie gets to ‘tend to the rabbits’. Compared to Lennie’s very childlike outlook on their dream George is very practical in his way of thinking for example his dream includes having ‘a cow and some pigs’ and ‘have a big vegetable patch and a rabbit hutch and chickens’ so that they can ‘live off the fatta the lan’. A lot of the men in the novel that move from place to place often dream of having their own place, something that can belong to them and being their own boss. George is possibly the only person that gets close to his dream being achieved with a little help from Candy. Another character with a dream is Curley’s wife, who wants to be ‘in the movies’. Her dream is based upon