Of Mice And Men Dreams Analysis
Explore the ways that Arthur Miller and John Steinbeck use dreams in Of Mice and Men and Death of a Salesman –
Dreams are used throughout Death of a Salesman and Of Mice and Men. Both authors Miller and Steinbeck use dreams but from different perspective, different context and different backgrounds. John Steinbeck, before he became an author worked in a farm as a farm labourer and also worked at a sugar plant and a was a fruit picker in the West of America, in California, where most of his inspiration for his books such as The Pearl, East of Eden and Of Mice and Men took place. It was from the people on the farms that help influence his characters, additionally Steinbeck’s experiences of working at these farms had made him ask the question …show more content…
of ‘Can People achieve their personal dream in life’? Arthur Miller was from a wealthy family until 1929 in the Wall Street crash when his family lost all their fortune. As a consequence of this, his family moved away to Brooklyn. Miller helped his family out by delivering bread to help pay back what his family once had. It was because of this event that Miller wrote his plays, mainly about his past. He uses dreams to illustrate what his family wanted after the Wall Street crash.
The American Dream is a dream of a piece of land or property in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. The American Dream is a major part of the lives in Death of a Salesman, and Of Mice and Men characters. Both books use the American Dream but portray the dreams differently. The main dream in Of Mice and Men is of the characters George, Lennie and Candy going out west and finding a piece of land that they can work on and not have to be bossed around. Miller used this dream to express George and Lennie’s further by showing that George actually cares about Lennie and wants to protect him from trouble and therefore buying some land would be a good way of excluding Lennie from the public eye but still making him happy and safe. Lennie’s part of the dream is his addition of stroking soft things like puppies and rabbits and therefore on the land would have a job to stroke and look after the rabbits. Candy’s contribution for this dream is to help pay for a little of the ranch in return for living there as a retirement home when he is older. This makes the dream more achievable but when Lennie kills Curly’s wife, Candy knows who it was, and was devastated and furious as he knows that they have lost their chance of achieving their dream. This style of American Dream is different in Death of a Salesman as it focusses on owning a nice house, have free time, good jobs and lots of money. This is what Willy is trying to achieve and believes that if one works hard enough he will be rewarded. This reality for Willy does not help him by his perfect brother Ben who is a good example of Willy’s idea of the American Dream by owning large sections of land and a diamond mine when he was alive. Miller writes Death of a Salesman in a way that is not about achieving the American Dream but failing to achieve the American Dream. Miller writes and makes Willy think his dream can be achieved through having lots of money. Further on in the book it shows what the American Dream has done to Willy and Linda but also to George and Lennie as it makes Willy become more distant from his wife Linda who was very devoted to him and also George moves further away from Lennie after realising Lennie has no chance of surviving in this world.
Each character has different dreams and these dreams are used for escaping into different, happier and freer lives. In Of Mice and Men the escaping dreams are George, Lennie and Candy’s dream of owning a little patch of land and live on it in freedom. This dream is important to the readers as it shows that the 3 characters really want to achieve their dream and own land, especially when Lennie keeps asking George to repeat the dream. This also shows George and Lennie have been dreaming for this land for a while and are so desperate to achieve their dream. In Of Mice and Men, Curly’s wife dreams of escaping to a better place other than being on a ranch all day. This is important for two reasons, the first reason is that she is the only woman on the ranch and show that as we do not know her name she is treated as an object and so makes readers think that women in those times were treated like objects too. Secondly Curly’s wife does not want to live there and has to find things to do so she does not get bored. Women are treated as objects and house workers in Of Mice and Men and this does not give a positive attitude towards women. In Death of a Salesman the idea of escaping to different lives is show much more. Willy wants to move towards a much happier, freer life but also he wants his sons Happy and Biff to escape to a place of their own too. Willy wants to escape to a job that earns him lots of money, one in which he enjoys doing, like a Salesman. Willy does not like the sales job he currently has because he has to travel too far and does not receive the respect he believes he deserves. Willy uses different dreams to remember the past, when he was happier and freer. Biff Loman has a dream of escaping to the West to work with his hands because he cannot ignore his instincts which tell him to abandon Willy’s paralysing dreams. Overall in Of Mice and Men and Death of a Salesman the idea of escapism from different characters are the same and similarly for the reason of a better life.
Dreams are not always a good idea to have. In Of Mice and Men Lennie found out the hard way. When he killed Curly’s wife, George told him that if he got into trouble he should run away back to the deep green pool of the Salinas River where he stayed the night before they arrived at the ranch. When Lennie got there he started having hallucinations, he started hearing voices of his old Aunt Clara but in his own voice about how bad he had been treating George and how nice George had been to look after him “ he been doin’ nice things for you alla time. When he got a piece a pie you always got half or more un half. An, if there was any ketchup why he’d give it all to you “. This is important to the readers because even though it is from his Aunt Clara’s view it was actually from Lennie’s. “And when she spoke it was from Lennie’s voice “. This shows that Lennie knew he had done wrong and knew that George would be disappointed in him. Also in Of Mice and Men Lennie has more hallucinations after hearing Aunt Clair “Aunt Clara was gone out of Lennie’s head there came a gigantic rabbit “. Lennie was very fond of rabbits but the rabbits starting having a go at Lennie and Lennie started denying it. “Tend rabbits it said, scornfully, you crazy bastard, you ain’t fit to lick the boots of no rabbits, you’d forget em and let em go hungry, that’s what you’ll do. And then what would George think. I would not forget them, Lennie said loudly”. This is important because it shows however much you dream or however much you like animals you can be let down. In Death of a Salesman, Willy gets flashbacks of the past and most of the flashbacks are where he had taken the wrong road in life not to succeed. Arthur Miller uses the use of psychic time to represent Willy Loman as a salesman who is in a trapped dream of doing well which is now leading him to being ill and eventually leading him to commit suicide. The use of psychic time represents Willy in a different way and we work out from this time what went wrong in the past and how different it is to his life now in the play. Even though the use of psychic time is not an obvious nightmare dream as in Of Mice and Men it still is. Willy uses the use of psychic time to get himself out of situations that he does not want to be in.
Dreams are used negatively in Death of a Salesman and of mice and men. Most of these negative dreams are portrayed by having a lost dream, having no dream or having a failed dream. In of mice and men these dreams are used by the characters of Curly's wife, Crooks and Candy, Crooks has the strongest dream and the most different. Crooks is the black stable buck and is the only permanent employee at the ranch. As Crook's has the only permanent job on the ranch he has seen men like George and Lennie come and go, all dreaming of buying a piece of land but is not cynical to these dreams, as nobody has ever achieved it. Crooks dreams of being seen as equal to everyone else, he knows his civil rights. He remembers fondly of his childhood, when he played with the white children who came to his family chicken ranch and longs for a similar relationship with white people again. This is the sense of a lost dream and as of mice and men was written in 1937, influential figures like Martin Luther King did not start there civil rights campaign until 1960 and did not get his message across until he died on April 4th, 1968 but that was after the end of the wall street crash, and everything was better for Americans. Curly's wife has a failed dream in Of Mice and Men. Curly's wife is newly married to Curly and we never know her name so she is merely Curly's property with no individual identity. Her dream was to become a movie star. Her hopes were raised when she was a teenager and a man claimed he would take her to Hollywood, but when she didn't receive a letter from him, she married Curly. In Death of a Salesman this dream is shown differently and once. It is more about failing in life and betraying others. Arthur Miller uses the characters of Willy Loman and Biff Loman to show this dream. At the start of the play Willy's primary obsession is what he considers to be Biff's betrayal of his ambitions for him. When Biff walks out on Willy's ambitions for him, Willy takes this rejection as a personal affront and assumes that he failed to sell him on the American Dream which he is trapped in.
In modern day society we see people go through mistakes, pain and lose money whilst they attempt to have a glamorous life. The two books Death of a Salesman and Of Mice and Men show that everybody seems to go through emotions at one point or another and all seem to have a location in life where everything seems like a black hole that's going nowhere.
In the book Of Mice and Men, and Death of a Salesman, we see this is common. The stories are very different because no story is ever the same between people’s lives. In these two pieces, it is apparent that one of the main themes is struggle. Steinbeck and Miller both portray the worries, the want, and hurt of trying to get the ultimate American Dream.
Even though they are two different books, there are similarities between them. For instance George from of mice and men and willy from Death of a Salesman tend to share common ground as they are both striving to make sure their family or friend is doing well. George does what he can to protect Lennie throughout the book, while Willy does what he can to protect his family. There are lots of similarities and differences in the two books but they both lead to the same theme of tragedy because they were trapped in a dream, In Of Mice and Men it was Lennie and in Death of a salesman it was Willy.
Explore the ways that Arthur Miller and John Steinbeck use dreams in Of Mice and Men and Death of a Salesman –
Dreams are used throughout Death of a Salesman and Of Mice and Men. Both authors Miller and Steinbeck use dreams but from different perspective, different context and different backgrounds. John Steinbeck, before he became an author worked in a farm as a farm labourer and also worked at a sugar plant and a was a fruit picker in the West of America, in California, where most of his inspiration for his books such as The Pearl, East of Eden and Of Mice and Men took place. It was from the people on the farms that help influence his characters, additionally Steinbeck’s experiences of working at these farms had made him ask the question of ‘Can People achieve their personal dream in life’? Arthur Miller was from a wealthy family until 1929 in the Wall Street crash when his family lost all their fortune. As a consequence of this, his family moved away to Brooklyn. Miller helped his family out by delivering bread to help pay back what his family once had. It was because of this event that Miller wrote his plays, mainly about his past. He uses dreams to illustrate what his family wanted after the Wall Street crash.
The American Dream is a dream of a piece of land or property in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. The American Dream is a major part of the lives in Death of a Salesman, and Of Mice and Men characters. Both books use the American Dream but portray the dreams differently. The main dream in Of Mice and Men is of the characters George, Lennie and Candy going out west and finding a piece of land that they can work on and not have to be bossed around. Miller used this dream to express George and Lennie’s further by showing that George actually cares about Lennie and wants to protect him from trouble and therefore buying some land would be a good way of excluding Lennie from the public eye but still making him happy and safe. Lennie’s part of the dream is his addition of stroking soft things like puppies and rabbits and therefore on the land would have a job to stroke and look after the rabbits. Candy’s contribution for this dream is to help pay for a little of the ranch in return for living there as a retirement home when he is older. This makes the dream more achievable but when Lennie kills Curly’s wife, Candy knows who it was, and was devastated and furious as he knows that they have lost their chance of achieving their dream. This style of American Dream is different in Death of a Salesman as it focusses on owning a nice house, have free time, good jobs and lots of money. This is what Willy is trying to achieve and believes that if one works hard enough he will be rewarded. This reality for Willy does not help him by his perfect brother Ben who is a good example of Willy’s idea of the American Dream by owning large sections of land and a diamond mine when he was alive. Miller writes Death of a Salesman in a way that is not about achieving the American Dream but failing to achieve the American Dream. Miller writes and makes Willy think his dream can be achieved through having lots of money. Further on in the book it shows what the American Dream has done to Willy and Linda but also to George and Lennie as it makes Willy become more distant from his wife Linda who was very devoted to him and also George moves further away from Lennie after realising Lennie has no chance of surviving in this world.
Each character has different dreams and these dreams are used for escaping into different, happier and freer lives. In Of Mice and Men the escaping dreams are George, Lennie and Candy’s dream of owning a little patch of land and live on it in freedom. This dream is important to the readers as it shows that the 3 characters really want to achieve their dream and own land, especially when Lennie keeps asking George to repeat the dream. This also shows George and Lennie have been dreaming for this land for a while and are so desperate to achieve their dream. In Of Mice and Men, Curly’s wife dreams of escaping to a better place other than being on a ranch all day. This is important for two reasons, the first reason is that she is the only woman on the ranch and show that as we do not know her name she is treated as an object and so makes readers think that women in those times were treated like objects too. Secondly Curly’s wife does not want to live there and has to find things to do so she does not get bored. Women are treated as objects and house workers in Of Mice and Men and this does not give a positive attitude towards women. In Death of a Salesman the idea of escaping to different lives is show much more. Willy wants to move towards a much happier, freer life but also he wants his sons Happy and Biff to escape to a place of their own too. Willy wants to escape to a job that earns him lots of money, one in which he enjoys doing, like a Salesman. Willy does not like the sales job he currently has because he has to travel too far and does not receive the respect he believes he deserves. Willy uses different dreams to remember the past, when he was happier and freer. Biff Loman has a dream of escaping to the West to work with his hands because he cannot ignore his instincts which tell him to abandon Willy’s paralysing dreams. Overall in Of Mice and Men and Death of a Salesman the idea of escapism from different characters are the same and similarly for the reason of a better life.
Dreams are not always a good idea to have. In Of Mice and Men Lennie found out the hard way. When he killed Curly’s wife, George told him that if he got into trouble he should run away back to the deep green pool of the Salinas River where he stayed the night before they arrived at the ranch. When Lennie got there he started having hallucinations, he started hearing voices of his old Aunt Clara but in his own voice about how bad he had been treating George and how nice George had been to look after him “ he been doin’ nice things for you alla time. When he got a piece a pie you always got half or more un half. An, if there was any ketchup why he’d give it all to you “. This is important to the readers because even though it is from his Aunt Clara’s view it was actually from Lennie’s. “And when she spoke it was from Lennie’s voice “. This shows that Lennie knew he had done wrong and knew that George would be disappointed in him. Also in Of Mice and Men Lennie has more hallucinations after hearing Aunt Clair “Aunt Clara was gone out of Lennie’s head there came a gigantic rabbit “. Lennie was very fond of rabbits but the rabbits starting having a go at Lennie and Lennie started denying it. “Tend rabbits it said, scornfully, you crazy bastard, you ain’t fit to lick the boots of no rabbits, you’d forget em and let em go hungry, that’s what you’ll do. And then what would George think. I would not forget them, Lennie said loudly”. This is important because it shows however much you dream or however much you like animals you can be let down. In Death of a Salesman, Willy gets flashbacks of the past and most of the flashbacks are where he had taken the wrong road in life not to succeed. Arthur Miller uses the use of psychic time to represent Willy Loman as a salesman who is in a trapped dream of doing well which is now leading him to being ill and eventually leading him to commit suicide. The use of psychic time represents Willy in a different way and we work out from this time what went wrong in the past and how different it is to his life now in the play. Even though the use of psychic time is not an obvious nightmare dream as in Of Mice and Men it still is. Willy uses the use of psychic time to get himself out of situations that he does not want to be in.
Dreams are used negatively in Death of a Salesman and of mice and men. Most of these negative dreams are portrayed by having a lost dream, having no dream or having a failed dream. In of mice and men these dreams are used by the characters of Curly's wife, Crooks and Candy, Crooks has the strongest dream and the most different. Crooks is the black stable buck and is the only permanent employee at the ranch. As Crook's has the only permanent job on the ranch he has seen men like George and Lennie come and go, all dreaming of buying a piece of land but is not cynical to these dreams, as nobody has ever achieved it. Crooks dreams of being seen as equal to everyone else, he knows his civil rights. He remembers fondly of his childhood, when he played with the white children who came to his family chicken ranch and longs for a similar relationship with white people again. This is the sense of a lost dream and as of mice and men was written in 1937, influential figures like Martin Luther King did not start there civil rights campaign until 1960 and did not get his message across until he died on April 4th, 1968 but that was after the end of the wall street crash, and everything was better for Americans. Curly's wife has a failed dream in Of Mice and Men. Curly's wife is newly married to Curly and we never know her name so she is merely Curly's property with no individual identity. Her dream was to become a movie star. Her hopes were raised when she was a teenager and a man claimed he would take her to Hollywood, but when she didn't receive a letter from him, she married Curly. In Death of a Salesman this dream is shown differently and once. It is more about failing in life and betraying others. Arthur Miller uses the characters of Willy Loman and Biff Loman to show this dream. At the start of the play Willy's primary obsession is what he considers to be Biff's betrayal of his ambitions for him. When Biff walks out on Willy's ambitions for him, Willy takes this rejection as a personal affront and assumes that he failed to sell him on the American Dream which he is trapped in.
In modern day society we see people go through mistakes, pain and lose money whilst they attempt to have a glamorous life. The two books Death of a Salesman and Of Mice and Men show that everybody seems to go through emotions at one point or another and all seem to have a location in life where everything seems like a black hole that's going nowhere.
In the book Of Mice and Men, and Death of a Salesman, we see this is common. The stories are very different because no story is ever the same between people’s lives. In these two pieces, it is apparent that one of the main themes is struggle. Steinbeck and Miller both portray the worries, the want, and hurt of trying to get the ultimate American Dream.
Even though they are two different books, there are similarities between them. For instance George from of mice and men and willy from Death of a Salesman tend to share common ground as they are both striving to make sure their family or friend is doing well. George does what he can to protect Lennie throughout the book, while Willy does what he can to protect his family. There are lots of similarities and differences in the two books but they both lead to the same theme of tragedy because they were trapped in a dream, In Of Mice and Men it was Lennie and in Death of a salesman it was Willy.
Explore the ways that Arthur Miller and John Steinbeck use dreams in Of Mice and Men and Death of a Salesman –
Dreams are used throughout Death of a Salesman and Of Mice and Men. Both authors Miller and Steinbeck use dreams but from different perspective, different context and different backgrounds. John Steinbeck, before he became an author worked in a farm as a farm labourer and also worked at a sugar plant and a was a fruit picker in the West of America, in California, where most of his inspiration for his books such as The Pearl, East of Eden and Of Mice and Men took place. It was from the people on the farms that help influence his characters, additionally Steinbeck’s experiences of working at these farms had made him ask the question of ‘Can People achieve their personal dream in life’? Arthur Miller was from a wealthy family until 1929 in the Wall Street crash when his family lost all their fortune. As a consequence of this, his family moved away to Brooklyn. Miller helped his family out by delivering bread to help pay back what his family once had. It was because of this event that Miller wrote his plays, mainly about his past. He uses dreams to illustrate what his family wanted after the Wall Street crash.
The American Dream is a dream of a piece of land or property in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. The American Dream is a major part of the lives in Death of a Salesman, and Of Mice and Men characters. Both books use the American Dream but portray the dreams differently. The main dream in Of Mice and Men is of the characters George, Lennie and Candy going out west and finding a piece of land that they can work on and not have to be bossed around. Miller used this dream to express George and Lennie’s further by showing that George actually cares about Lennie and wants to protect him from trouble and therefore buying some land would be a good way of excluding Lennie from the public eye but still making him happy and safe. Lennie’s part of the dream is his addition of stroking soft things like puppies and rabbits and therefore on the land would have a job to stroke and look after the rabbits. Candy’s contribution for this dream is to help pay for a little of the ranch in return for living there as a retirement home when he is older. This makes the dream more achievable but when Lennie kills Curly’s wife, Candy knows who it was, and was devastated and furious as he knows that they have lost their chance of achieving their dream. This style of American Dream is different in Death of a Salesman as it focusses on owning a nice house, have free time, good jobs and lots of money. This is what Willy is trying to achieve and believes that if one works hard enough he will be rewarded. This reality for Willy does not help him by his perfect brother Ben who is a good example of Willy’s idea of the American Dream by owning large sections of land and a diamond mine when he was alive. Miller writes Death of a Salesman in a way that is not about achieving the American Dream but failing to achieve the American Dream. Miller writes and makes Willy think his dream can be achieved through having lots of money. Further on in the book it shows what the American Dream has done to Willy and Linda but also to George and Lennie as it makes Willy become more distant from his wife Linda who was very devoted to him and also George moves further away from Lennie after realising Lennie has no chance of surviving in this world.
Each character has different dreams and these dreams are used for escaping into different, happier and freer lives. In Of Mice and Men the escaping dreams are George, Lennie and Candy’s dream of owning a little patch of land and live on it in freedom. This dream is important to the readers as it shows that the 3 characters really want to achieve their dream and own land, especially when Lennie keeps asking George to repeat the dream. This also shows George and Lennie have been dreaming for this land for a while and are so desperate to achieve their dream. In Of Mice and Men, Curly’s wife dreams of escaping to a better place other than being on a ranch all day. This is important for two reasons, the first reason is that she is the only woman on the ranch and show that as we do not know her name she is treated as an object and so makes readers think that women in those times were treated like objects too. Secondly Curly’s wife does not want to live there and has to find things to do so she does not get bored. Women are treated as objects and house workers in Of Mice and Men and this does not give a positive attitude towards women. In Death of a Salesman the idea of escaping to different lives is show much more. Willy wants to move towards a much happier, freer life but also he wants his sons Happy and Biff to escape to a place of their own too. Willy wants to escape to a job that earns him lots of money, one in which he enjoys doing, like a Salesman. Willy does not like the sales job he currently has because he has to travel too far and does not receive the respect he believes he deserves. Willy uses different dreams to remember the past, when he was happier and freer. Biff Loman has a dream of escaping to the West to work with his hands because he cannot ignore his instincts which tell him to abandon Willy’s paralysing dreams. Overall in Of Mice and Men and Death of a Salesman the idea of escapism from different characters are the same and similarly for the reason of a better life.
Dreams are not always a good idea to have.
In Of Mice and Men Lennie found out the hard way. When he killed Curly’s wife, George told him that if he got into trouble he should run away back to the deep green pool of the Salinas River where he stayed the night before they arrived at the ranch. When Lennie got there he started having hallucinations, he started hearing voices of his old Aunt Clara but in his own voice about how bad he had been treating George and how nice George had been to look after him “ he been doin’ nice things for you alla time. When he got a piece a pie you always got half or more un half. An, if there was any ketchup why he’d give it all to you “. This is important to the readers because even though it is from his Aunt Clara’s view it was actually from Lennie’s. “And when she spoke it was from Lennie’s voice “. This shows that Lennie knew he had done wrong and knew that George would be disappointed in him. Also in Of Mice and Men Lennie has more hallucinations after hearing Aunt Clair “Aunt Clara was gone out of Lennie’s head there came a gigantic rabbit “. Lennie was very fond of rabbits but the rabbits starting having a go at Lennie and Lennie started denying it. “Tend rabbits it said, scornfully, you crazy bastard, you ain’t fit to lick the boots of no rabbits, you’d forget em and let em go hungry, that’s what you’ll do. And then what would George think. I would not forget them, Lennie said loudly”. This is important because it shows however much you dream or however much you like animals you can be let down. In Death of a Salesman, Willy gets flashbacks of the past and most of the
flashbacks are where he had taken the wrong road in life not to succeed. Arthur Miller uses the use of psychic time to represent Willy Loman as a salesman who is in a trapped dream of doing well which is now leading him to being ill and eventually leading him to commit suicide. The use of psychic time represents Willy in a different way and we work out from this time what went wrong in the past and how different it is to his life now in the play. Even though the use of psychic time is not an obvious nightmare dream as in Of Mice and Men it still is. Willy uses the use of psychic time to get himself out of situations that he does not want to be in.
Dreams are used negatively in Death of a Salesman and of mice and men. Most of these negative dreams are portrayed by having a lost dream, having no dream or having a failed dream. In of mice and men these dreams are used by the characters of Curly's wife, Crooks and Candy, Crooks has the strongest dream and the most different. Crooks is the black stable buck and is the only permanent employee at the ranch. As Crook's has the only permanent job on the ranch he has seen men like George and Lennie come and go, all dreaming of buying a piece of land but is not cynical to these dreams, as nobody has ever achieved it. Crooks dreams of being seen as equal to everyone else, he knows his civil rights. He remembers fondly of his childhood, when he played with the white children who came to his family chicken ranch and longs for a similar relationship with white people again. This is the sense of a lost dream and as of mice and men was written in 1937, influential figures like Martin Luther King did not start there civil rights campaign until 1960 and did not get his message across until he died on April 4th, 1968 but that was after the end of the wall street crash, and everything was better for Americans. Curly's wife has a failed dream in Of Mice and Men. Curly's wife is newly married to Curly and we never know her name so she is merely Curly's property with no individual identity. Her dream was to become a movie star. Her hopes were raised when she was a teenager and a man claimed he would take her to Hollywood, but when she didn't receive a letter from him, she married Curly. In Death of a Salesman this dream is shown differently and once. It is more about failing in life and betraying others. Arthur Miller uses the characters of Willy Loman and Biff Loman to show this dream. At the start of the play Willy's primary obsession is what he considers to be Biff's betrayal of his ambitions for him. When Biff walks out on Willy's ambitions for him, Willy takes this rejection as a personal affront and assumes that he failed to sell him on the American Dream which he is trapped in.
In modern day society we see people go through mistakes, pain and lose money whilst they attempt to have a glamorous life. The two books Death of a Salesman and Of Mice and Men show that everybody seems to go through emotions at one point or another and all seem to have a location in life where everything seems like a black hole that's going nowhere.
In the book Of Mice and Men, and Death of a Salesman, we see this is common. The stories are very different because no story is ever the same between people’s lives. In these two pieces, it is apparent that one of the main themes is struggle. Steinbeck and Miller both portray the worries, the want, and hurt of trying to get the ultimate American Dream.
Even though they are two different books, there are similarities between them. For instance George from of mice and men and willy from Death of a Salesman tend to share common ground as they are both striving to make sure their family or friend is doing well. George does what he can to protect Lennie throughout the book, while Willy does what he can to protect his family. There are lots of similarities and differences in the two books but they both lead to the same theme of tragedy because they were trapped in a dream, In Of Mice and Men it was Lennie and in Death of a salesman it was Willy.
Explore the ways that Arthur Miller and John Steinbeck use dreams in Of Mice and Men and Death of a Salesman –
Dreams are used throughout Death of a Salesman and Of Mice and Men. Both authors Miller and Steinbeck use dreams but from different perspective, different context and different backgrounds. John Steinbeck, before he became an author worked in a farm as a farm labourer and also worked at a sugar plant and a was a fruit picker in the West of America, in California, where most of his inspiration for his books such as The Pearl, East of Eden and Of Mice and Men took place. It was from the people on the farms that help influence his characters, additionally Steinbeck’s experiences of working at these farms had made him ask the question of ‘Can People achieve their personal dream in life’? Arthur Miller was from a wealthy family until 1929 in the Wall Street crash when his family lost all their fortune. As a consequence of this, his family moved away to Brooklyn. Miller helped his family out by delivering bread to help pay back what his family once had. It was because of this event that Miller wrote his plays, mainly about his past. He uses dreams to illustrate what his family wanted after the Wall Street crash.
The American Dream is a dream of a piece of land or property in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. The American Dream is a major part of the lives in Death of a Salesman, and Of Mice and Men characters. Both books use the American Dream but portray the dreams differently. The main dream in Of Mice and Men is of the characters George, Lennie and Candy going out west and finding a piece of land that they can work on and not have to be bossed around. Miller used this dream to express George and Lennie’s further by showing that George actually cares about Lennie and wants to protect him from trouble and therefore buying some land would be a good way of excluding Lennie from the public eye but still making him happy and safe. Lennie’s part of the dream is his addition of stroking soft things like puppies and rabbits and therefore on the land would have a job to stroke and look after the rabbits. Candy’s contribution for this dream is to help pay for a little of the ranch in return for living there as a retirement home when he is older. This makes the dream more achievable but when Lennie kills Curly’s wife, Candy knows who it was, and was devastated and furious as he knows that they have lost their chance of achieving their dream. This style of American Dream is different in Death of a Salesman as it focusses on owning a nice house, have free time, good jobs and lots of money. This is what Willy is trying to achieve and believes that if one works hard enough he will be rewarded. This reality for Willy does not help him by his perfect brother Ben who is a good example of Willy’s idea of the American Dream by owning large sections of land and a diamond mine when he was alive. Miller writes Death of a Salesman in a way that is not about achieving the American Dream but failing to achieve the American Dream. Miller writes and makes Willy think his dream can be achieved through having lots of money. Further on in the book it shows what the American Dream has done to Willy and Linda but also to George and Lennie as it makes Willy become more distant from his wife Linda who was very devoted to him and also George moves further away from Lennie after realising Lennie has no chance of surviving in this world.
Each character has different dreams and these dreams are used for escaping into different, happier and freer lives. In Of Mice and Men the escaping dreams are George, Lennie and Candy’s dream of owning a little patch of land and live on it in freedom. This dream is important to the readers as it shows that the 3 characters really want to achieve their dream and own land, especially when Lennie keeps asking George to repeat the dream. This also shows George and Lennie have been dreaming for this land for a while and are so desperate to achieve their dream. In Of Mice and Men, Curly’s wife dreams of escaping to a better place other than being on a ranch all day. This is important for two reasons, the first reason is that she is the only woman on the ranch and show that as we do not know her name she is treated as an object and so makes readers think that women in those times were treated like objects too. Secondly Curly’s wife does not want to live there and has to find things to do so she does not get bored. Women are treated as objects and house workers in Of Mice and Men and this does not give a positive attitude towards women. In Death of a Salesman the idea of escaping to different lives is show much more. Willy wants to move towards a much happier, freer life but also he wants his sons Happy and Biff to escape to a place of their own too. Willy wants to escape to a job that earns him lots of money, one in which he enjoys doing, like a Salesman. Willy does not like the sales job he currently has because he has to travel too far and does not receive the respect he believes he deserves. Willy uses different dreams to remember the past, when he was happier and freer. Biff Loman has a dream of escaping to the West to work with his hands because he cannot ignore his instincts which tell him to abandon Willy’s paralysing dreams. Overall in Of Mice and Men and Death of a Salesman the idea of escapism from different characters are the same and similarly for the reason of a better life.
Dreams are not always a good idea to have. In Of Mice and Men Lennie found out the hard way. When he killed Curly’s wife, George told him that if he got into trouble he should run away back to the deep green pool of the Salinas River where he stayed the night before they arrived at the ranch. When Lennie got there he started having hallucinations, he started hearing voices of his old Aunt Clara but in his own voice about how bad he had been treating George and how nice George had been to look after him “ he been doin’ nice things for you alla time. When he got a piece a pie you always got half or more un half. An, if there was any ketchup why he’d give it all to you “. This is important to the readers because even though it is from his Aunt Clara’s view it was actually from Lennie’s. “And when she spoke it was from Lennie’s voice “. This shows that Lennie knew he had done wrong and knew that George would be disappointed in him. Also in Of Mice and Men Lennie has more hallucinations after hearing Aunt Clair “Aunt Clara was gone out of Lennie’s head there came a gigantic rabbit “. Lennie was very fond of rabbits but the rabbits starting having a go at Lennie and Lennie started denying it. “Tend rabbits it said, scornfully, you crazy bastard, you ain’t fit to lick the boots of no rabbits, you’d forget em and let em go hungry, that’s what you’ll do. And then what would George think. I would not forget them, Lennie said loudly”. This is important because it shows however much you dream or however much you like animals you can be let down. In Death of a Salesman, Willy gets flashbacks of the past and most of the flashbacks are where he had taken the wrong road in life not to succeed. Arthur Miller uses the use of psychic time to represent Willy Loman as a salesman who is in a trapped dream of doing well which is now leading him to being ill and eventually leading him to commit suicide. The use of psychic time represents Willy in a different way and we work out from this time what went wrong in the past and how different it is to his life now in the play. Even though the use of psychic time is not an obvious nightmare dream as in Of Mice and Men it still is. Willy uses the use of psychic time to get himself out of situations that he does not want to be in.
Dreams are used negatively in Death of a Salesman and of mice and men. Most of these negative dreams are portrayed by having a lost dream, having no dream or having a failed dream. In of mice and men these dreams are used by the characters of Curly's wife, Crooks and Candy, Crooks has the strongest dream and the most different. Crooks is the black stable buck and is the only permanent employee at the ranch. As Crook's has the only permanent job on the ranch he has seen men like George and Lennie come and go, all dreaming of buying a piece of land but is not cynical to these dreams, as nobody has ever achieved it. Crooks dreams of being seen as equal to everyone else, he knows his civil rights. He remembers fondly of his childhood, when he played with the white children who came to his family chicken ranch and longs for a similar relationship with white people again. This is the sense of a lost dream and as of mice and men was written in 1937, influential figures like Martin Luther King did not start there civil rights campaign until 1960 and did not get his message across until he died on April 4th, 1968 but that was after the end of the wall street crash, and everything was better for Americans. Curly's wife has a failed dream in Of Mice and Men. Curly's wife is newly married to Curly and we never know her name so she is merely Curly's property with no individual identity. Her dream was to become a movie star. Her hopes were raised when she was a teenager and a man claimed he would take her to Hollywood, but when she didn't receive a letter from him, she married Curly. In Death of a Salesman this dream is shown differently and once. It is more about failing in life and betraying others. Arthur Miller uses the characters of Willy Loman and Biff Loman to show this dream. At the start of the play Willy's primary obsession is what he considers to be Biff's betrayal of his ambitions for him. When Biff walks out on Willy's ambitions for him, Willy takes this rejection as a personal affront and assumes that he failed to sell him on the American Dream which he is trapped in.
In modern day society we see people go through mistakes, pain and lose money whilst they attempt to have a glamorous life. The two books Death of a Salesman and Of Mice and Men show that everybody seems to go through emotions at one point or another and all seem to have a location in life where everything seems like a black hole that's going nowhere.
In the book Of Mice and Men, and Death of a Salesman, we see this is common. The stories are very different because no story is ever the same between people’s lives. In these two pieces, it is apparent that one of the main themes is struggle. Steinbeck and Miller both portray the worries, the want, and hurt of trying to get the ultimate American Dream.
Even though they are two different books, there are similarities between them. For instance George from of mice and men and willy from Death of a Salesman tend to share common ground as they are both striving to make sure their family or friend is doing well. George does what he can to protect Lennie throughout the book, while Willy does what he can to protect his family. There are lots of similarities and differences in the two books but they both lead to the same theme of tragedy because they were trapped in a dream, In Of Mice and Men it was Lennie and in Death of a salesman it was Willy.
Dreams are used throughout Death of a Salesman and Of Mice and Men. Both authors Miller and Steinbeck use dreams but from different perspective, different context and different backgrounds. John Steinbeck, before he became an author worked in a farm as a farm labourer and also worked at a sugar plant and a was a fruit picker in the West of America, in California, where most of his inspiration for his books such as The Pearl, East of Eden and Of Mice and Men took place. It was from the people on the farms that help influence his characters, additionally Steinbeck’s experiences of working at these farms had made him ask the question …show more content…
of ‘Can People achieve their personal dream in life’? Arthur Miller was from a wealthy family until 1929 in the Wall Street crash when his family lost all their fortune. As a consequence of this, his family moved away to Brooklyn. Miller helped his family out by delivering bread to help pay back what his family once had. It was because of this event that Miller wrote his plays, mainly about his past. He uses dreams to illustrate what his family wanted after the Wall Street crash.
The American Dream is a dream of a piece of land or property in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. The American Dream is a major part of the lives in Death of a Salesman, and Of Mice and Men characters. Both books use the American Dream but portray the dreams differently. The main dream in Of Mice and Men is of the characters George, Lennie and Candy going out west and finding a piece of land that they can work on and not have to be bossed around. Miller used this dream to express George and Lennie’s further by showing that George actually cares about Lennie and wants to protect him from trouble and therefore buying some land would be a good way of excluding Lennie from the public eye but still making him happy and safe. Lennie’s part of the dream is his addition of stroking soft things like puppies and rabbits and therefore on the land would have a job to stroke and look after the rabbits. Candy’s contribution for this dream is to help pay for a little of the ranch in return for living there as a retirement home when he is older. This makes the dream more achievable but when Lennie kills Curly’s wife, Candy knows who it was, and was devastated and furious as he knows that they have lost their chance of achieving their dream. This style of American Dream is different in Death of a Salesman as it focusses on owning a nice house, have free time, good jobs and lots of money. This is what Willy is trying to achieve and believes that if one works hard enough he will be rewarded. This reality for Willy does not help him by his perfect brother Ben who is a good example of Willy’s idea of the American Dream by owning large sections of land and a diamond mine when he was alive. Miller writes Death of a Salesman in a way that is not about achieving the American Dream but failing to achieve the American Dream. Miller writes and makes Willy think his dream can be achieved through having lots of money. Further on in the book it shows what the American Dream has done to Willy and Linda but also to George and Lennie as it makes Willy become more distant from his wife Linda who was very devoted to him and also George moves further away from Lennie after realising Lennie has no chance of surviving in this world.
Each character has different dreams and these dreams are used for escaping into different, happier and freer lives. In Of Mice and Men the escaping dreams are George, Lennie and Candy’s dream of owning a little patch of land and live on it in freedom. This dream is important to the readers as it shows that the 3 characters really want to achieve their dream and own land, especially when Lennie keeps asking George to repeat the dream. This also shows George and Lennie have been dreaming for this land for a while and are so desperate to achieve their dream. In Of Mice and Men, Curly’s wife dreams of escaping to a better place other than being on a ranch all day. This is important for two reasons, the first reason is that she is the only woman on the ranch and show that as we do not know her name she is treated as an object and so makes readers think that women in those times were treated like objects too. Secondly Curly’s wife does not want to live there and has to find things to do so she does not get bored. Women are treated as objects and house workers in Of Mice and Men and this does not give a positive attitude towards women. In Death of a Salesman the idea of escaping to different lives is show much more. Willy wants to move towards a much happier, freer life but also he wants his sons Happy and Biff to escape to a place of their own too. Willy wants to escape to a job that earns him lots of money, one in which he enjoys doing, like a Salesman. Willy does not like the sales job he currently has because he has to travel too far and does not receive the respect he believes he deserves. Willy uses different dreams to remember the past, when he was happier and freer. Biff Loman has a dream of escaping to the West to work with his hands because he cannot ignore his instincts which tell him to abandon Willy’s paralysing dreams. Overall in Of Mice and Men and Death of a Salesman the idea of escapism from different characters are the same and similarly for the reason of a better life.
Dreams are not always a good idea to have. In Of Mice and Men Lennie found out the hard way. When he killed Curly’s wife, George told him that if he got into trouble he should run away back to the deep green pool of the Salinas River where he stayed the night before they arrived at the ranch. When Lennie got there he started having hallucinations, he started hearing voices of his old Aunt Clara but in his own voice about how bad he had been treating George and how nice George had been to look after him “ he been doin’ nice things for you alla time. When he got a piece a pie you always got half or more un half. An, if there was any ketchup why he’d give it all to you “. This is important to the readers because even though it is from his Aunt Clara’s view it was actually from Lennie’s. “And when she spoke it was from Lennie’s voice “. This shows that Lennie knew he had done wrong and knew that George would be disappointed in him. Also in Of Mice and Men Lennie has more hallucinations after hearing Aunt Clair “Aunt Clara was gone out of Lennie’s head there came a gigantic rabbit “. Lennie was very fond of rabbits but the rabbits starting having a go at Lennie and Lennie started denying it. “Tend rabbits it said, scornfully, you crazy bastard, you ain’t fit to lick the boots of no rabbits, you’d forget em and let em go hungry, that’s what you’ll do. And then what would George think. I would not forget them, Lennie said loudly”. This is important because it shows however much you dream or however much you like animals you can be let down. In Death of a Salesman, Willy gets flashbacks of the past and most of the flashbacks are where he had taken the wrong road in life not to succeed. Arthur Miller uses the use of psychic time to represent Willy Loman as a salesman who is in a trapped dream of doing well which is now leading him to being ill and eventually leading him to commit suicide. The use of psychic time represents Willy in a different way and we work out from this time what went wrong in the past and how different it is to his life now in the play. Even though the use of psychic time is not an obvious nightmare dream as in Of Mice and Men it still is. Willy uses the use of psychic time to get himself out of situations that he does not want to be in.
Dreams are used negatively in Death of a Salesman and of mice and men. Most of these negative dreams are portrayed by having a lost dream, having no dream or having a failed dream. In of mice and men these dreams are used by the characters of Curly's wife, Crooks and Candy, Crooks has the strongest dream and the most different. Crooks is the black stable buck and is the only permanent employee at the ranch. As Crook's has the only permanent job on the ranch he has seen men like George and Lennie come and go, all dreaming of buying a piece of land but is not cynical to these dreams, as nobody has ever achieved it. Crooks dreams of being seen as equal to everyone else, he knows his civil rights. He remembers fondly of his childhood, when he played with the white children who came to his family chicken ranch and longs for a similar relationship with white people again. This is the sense of a lost dream and as of mice and men was written in 1937, influential figures like Martin Luther King did not start there civil rights campaign until 1960 and did not get his message across until he died on April 4th, 1968 but that was after the end of the wall street crash, and everything was better for Americans. Curly's wife has a failed dream in Of Mice and Men. Curly's wife is newly married to Curly and we never know her name so she is merely Curly's property with no individual identity. Her dream was to become a movie star. Her hopes were raised when she was a teenager and a man claimed he would take her to Hollywood, but when she didn't receive a letter from him, she married Curly. In Death of a Salesman this dream is shown differently and once. It is more about failing in life and betraying others. Arthur Miller uses the characters of Willy Loman and Biff Loman to show this dream. At the start of the play Willy's primary obsession is what he considers to be Biff's betrayal of his ambitions for him. When Biff walks out on Willy's ambitions for him, Willy takes this rejection as a personal affront and assumes that he failed to sell him on the American Dream which he is trapped in.
In modern day society we see people go through mistakes, pain and lose money whilst they attempt to have a glamorous life. The two books Death of a Salesman and Of Mice and Men show that everybody seems to go through emotions at one point or another and all seem to have a location in life where everything seems like a black hole that's going nowhere.
In the book Of Mice and Men, and Death of a Salesman, we see this is common. The stories are very different because no story is ever the same between people’s lives. In these two pieces, it is apparent that one of the main themes is struggle. Steinbeck and Miller both portray the worries, the want, and hurt of trying to get the ultimate American Dream.
Even though they are two different books, there are similarities between them. For instance George from of mice and men and willy from Death of a Salesman tend to share common ground as they are both striving to make sure their family or friend is doing well. George does what he can to protect Lennie throughout the book, while Willy does what he can to protect his family. There are lots of similarities and differences in the two books but they both lead to the same theme of tragedy because they were trapped in a dream, In Of Mice and Men it was Lennie and in Death of a salesman it was Willy.
Explore the ways that Arthur Miller and John Steinbeck use dreams in Of Mice and Men and Death of a Salesman –
Dreams are used throughout Death of a Salesman and Of Mice and Men. Both authors Miller and Steinbeck use dreams but from different perspective, different context and different backgrounds. John Steinbeck, before he became an author worked in a farm as a farm labourer and also worked at a sugar plant and a was a fruit picker in the West of America, in California, where most of his inspiration for his books such as The Pearl, East of Eden and Of Mice and Men took place. It was from the people on the farms that help influence his characters, additionally Steinbeck’s experiences of working at these farms had made him ask the question of ‘Can People achieve their personal dream in life’? Arthur Miller was from a wealthy family until 1929 in the Wall Street crash when his family lost all their fortune. As a consequence of this, his family moved away to Brooklyn. Miller helped his family out by delivering bread to help pay back what his family once had. It was because of this event that Miller wrote his plays, mainly about his past. He uses dreams to illustrate what his family wanted after the Wall Street crash.
The American Dream is a dream of a piece of land or property in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. The American Dream is a major part of the lives in Death of a Salesman, and Of Mice and Men characters. Both books use the American Dream but portray the dreams differently. The main dream in Of Mice and Men is of the characters George, Lennie and Candy going out west and finding a piece of land that they can work on and not have to be bossed around. Miller used this dream to express George and Lennie’s further by showing that George actually cares about Lennie and wants to protect him from trouble and therefore buying some land would be a good way of excluding Lennie from the public eye but still making him happy and safe. Lennie’s part of the dream is his addition of stroking soft things like puppies and rabbits and therefore on the land would have a job to stroke and look after the rabbits. Candy’s contribution for this dream is to help pay for a little of the ranch in return for living there as a retirement home when he is older. This makes the dream more achievable but when Lennie kills Curly’s wife, Candy knows who it was, and was devastated and furious as he knows that they have lost their chance of achieving their dream. This style of American Dream is different in Death of a Salesman as it focusses on owning a nice house, have free time, good jobs and lots of money. This is what Willy is trying to achieve and believes that if one works hard enough he will be rewarded. This reality for Willy does not help him by his perfect brother Ben who is a good example of Willy’s idea of the American Dream by owning large sections of land and a diamond mine when he was alive. Miller writes Death of a Salesman in a way that is not about achieving the American Dream but failing to achieve the American Dream. Miller writes and makes Willy think his dream can be achieved through having lots of money. Further on in the book it shows what the American Dream has done to Willy and Linda but also to George and Lennie as it makes Willy become more distant from his wife Linda who was very devoted to him and also George moves further away from Lennie after realising Lennie has no chance of surviving in this world.
Each character has different dreams and these dreams are used for escaping into different, happier and freer lives. In Of Mice and Men the escaping dreams are George, Lennie and Candy’s dream of owning a little patch of land and live on it in freedom. This dream is important to the readers as it shows that the 3 characters really want to achieve their dream and own land, especially when Lennie keeps asking George to repeat the dream. This also shows George and Lennie have been dreaming for this land for a while and are so desperate to achieve their dream. In Of Mice and Men, Curly’s wife dreams of escaping to a better place other than being on a ranch all day. This is important for two reasons, the first reason is that she is the only woman on the ranch and show that as we do not know her name she is treated as an object and so makes readers think that women in those times were treated like objects too. Secondly Curly’s wife does not want to live there and has to find things to do so she does not get bored. Women are treated as objects and house workers in Of Mice and Men and this does not give a positive attitude towards women. In Death of a Salesman the idea of escaping to different lives is show much more. Willy wants to move towards a much happier, freer life but also he wants his sons Happy and Biff to escape to a place of their own too. Willy wants to escape to a job that earns him lots of money, one in which he enjoys doing, like a Salesman. Willy does not like the sales job he currently has because he has to travel too far and does not receive the respect he believes he deserves. Willy uses different dreams to remember the past, when he was happier and freer. Biff Loman has a dream of escaping to the West to work with his hands because he cannot ignore his instincts which tell him to abandon Willy’s paralysing dreams. Overall in Of Mice and Men and Death of a Salesman the idea of escapism from different characters are the same and similarly for the reason of a better life.
Dreams are not always a good idea to have. In Of Mice and Men Lennie found out the hard way. When he killed Curly’s wife, George told him that if he got into trouble he should run away back to the deep green pool of the Salinas River where he stayed the night before they arrived at the ranch. When Lennie got there he started having hallucinations, he started hearing voices of his old Aunt Clara but in his own voice about how bad he had been treating George and how nice George had been to look after him “ he been doin’ nice things for you alla time. When he got a piece a pie you always got half or more un half. An, if there was any ketchup why he’d give it all to you “. This is important to the readers because even though it is from his Aunt Clara’s view it was actually from Lennie’s. “And when she spoke it was from Lennie’s voice “. This shows that Lennie knew he had done wrong and knew that George would be disappointed in him. Also in Of Mice and Men Lennie has more hallucinations after hearing Aunt Clair “Aunt Clara was gone out of Lennie’s head there came a gigantic rabbit “. Lennie was very fond of rabbits but the rabbits starting having a go at Lennie and Lennie started denying it. “Tend rabbits it said, scornfully, you crazy bastard, you ain’t fit to lick the boots of no rabbits, you’d forget em and let em go hungry, that’s what you’ll do. And then what would George think. I would not forget them, Lennie said loudly”. This is important because it shows however much you dream or however much you like animals you can be let down. In Death of a Salesman, Willy gets flashbacks of the past and most of the flashbacks are where he had taken the wrong road in life not to succeed. Arthur Miller uses the use of psychic time to represent Willy Loman as a salesman who is in a trapped dream of doing well which is now leading him to being ill and eventually leading him to commit suicide. The use of psychic time represents Willy in a different way and we work out from this time what went wrong in the past and how different it is to his life now in the play. Even though the use of psychic time is not an obvious nightmare dream as in Of Mice and Men it still is. Willy uses the use of psychic time to get himself out of situations that he does not want to be in.
Dreams are used negatively in Death of a Salesman and of mice and men. Most of these negative dreams are portrayed by having a lost dream, having no dream or having a failed dream. In of mice and men these dreams are used by the characters of Curly's wife, Crooks and Candy, Crooks has the strongest dream and the most different. Crooks is the black stable buck and is the only permanent employee at the ranch. As Crook's has the only permanent job on the ranch he has seen men like George and Lennie come and go, all dreaming of buying a piece of land but is not cynical to these dreams, as nobody has ever achieved it. Crooks dreams of being seen as equal to everyone else, he knows his civil rights. He remembers fondly of his childhood, when he played with the white children who came to his family chicken ranch and longs for a similar relationship with white people again. This is the sense of a lost dream and as of mice and men was written in 1937, influential figures like Martin Luther King did not start there civil rights campaign until 1960 and did not get his message across until he died on April 4th, 1968 but that was after the end of the wall street crash, and everything was better for Americans. Curly's wife has a failed dream in Of Mice and Men. Curly's wife is newly married to Curly and we never know her name so she is merely Curly's property with no individual identity. Her dream was to become a movie star. Her hopes were raised when she was a teenager and a man claimed he would take her to Hollywood, but when she didn't receive a letter from him, she married Curly. In Death of a Salesman this dream is shown differently and once. It is more about failing in life and betraying others. Arthur Miller uses the characters of Willy Loman and Biff Loman to show this dream. At the start of the play Willy's primary obsession is what he considers to be Biff's betrayal of his ambitions for him. When Biff walks out on Willy's ambitions for him, Willy takes this rejection as a personal affront and assumes that he failed to sell him on the American Dream which he is trapped in.
In modern day society we see people go through mistakes, pain and lose money whilst they attempt to have a glamorous life. The two books Death of a Salesman and Of Mice and Men show that everybody seems to go through emotions at one point or another and all seem to have a location in life where everything seems like a black hole that's going nowhere.
In the book Of Mice and Men, and Death of a Salesman, we see this is common. The stories are very different because no story is ever the same between people’s lives. In these two pieces, it is apparent that one of the main themes is struggle. Steinbeck and Miller both portray the worries, the want, and hurt of trying to get the ultimate American Dream.
Even though they are two different books, there are similarities between them. For instance George from of mice and men and willy from Death of a Salesman tend to share common ground as they are both striving to make sure their family or friend is doing well. George does what he can to protect Lennie throughout the book, while Willy does what he can to protect his family. There are lots of similarities and differences in the two books but they both lead to the same theme of tragedy because they were trapped in a dream, In Of Mice and Men it was Lennie and in Death of a salesman it was Willy.
Explore the ways that Arthur Miller and John Steinbeck use dreams in Of Mice and Men and Death of a Salesman –
Dreams are used throughout Death of a Salesman and Of Mice and Men. Both authors Miller and Steinbeck use dreams but from different perspective, different context and different backgrounds. John Steinbeck, before he became an author worked in a farm as a farm labourer and also worked at a sugar plant and a was a fruit picker in the West of America, in California, where most of his inspiration for his books such as The Pearl, East of Eden and Of Mice and Men took place. It was from the people on the farms that help influence his characters, additionally Steinbeck’s experiences of working at these farms had made him ask the question of ‘Can People achieve their personal dream in life’? Arthur Miller was from a wealthy family until 1929 in the Wall Street crash when his family lost all their fortune. As a consequence of this, his family moved away to Brooklyn. Miller helped his family out by delivering bread to help pay back what his family once had. It was because of this event that Miller wrote his plays, mainly about his past. He uses dreams to illustrate what his family wanted after the Wall Street crash.
The American Dream is a dream of a piece of land or property in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. The American Dream is a major part of the lives in Death of a Salesman, and Of Mice and Men characters. Both books use the American Dream but portray the dreams differently. The main dream in Of Mice and Men is of the characters George, Lennie and Candy going out west and finding a piece of land that they can work on and not have to be bossed around. Miller used this dream to express George and Lennie’s further by showing that George actually cares about Lennie and wants to protect him from trouble and therefore buying some land would be a good way of excluding Lennie from the public eye but still making him happy and safe. Lennie’s part of the dream is his addition of stroking soft things like puppies and rabbits and therefore on the land would have a job to stroke and look after the rabbits. Candy’s contribution for this dream is to help pay for a little of the ranch in return for living there as a retirement home when he is older. This makes the dream more achievable but when Lennie kills Curly’s wife, Candy knows who it was, and was devastated and furious as he knows that they have lost their chance of achieving their dream. This style of American Dream is different in Death of a Salesman as it focusses on owning a nice house, have free time, good jobs and lots of money. This is what Willy is trying to achieve and believes that if one works hard enough he will be rewarded. This reality for Willy does not help him by his perfect brother Ben who is a good example of Willy’s idea of the American Dream by owning large sections of land and a diamond mine when he was alive. Miller writes Death of a Salesman in a way that is not about achieving the American Dream but failing to achieve the American Dream. Miller writes and makes Willy think his dream can be achieved through having lots of money. Further on in the book it shows what the American Dream has done to Willy and Linda but also to George and Lennie as it makes Willy become more distant from his wife Linda who was very devoted to him and also George moves further away from Lennie after realising Lennie has no chance of surviving in this world.
Each character has different dreams and these dreams are used for escaping into different, happier and freer lives. In Of Mice and Men the escaping dreams are George, Lennie and Candy’s dream of owning a little patch of land and live on it in freedom. This dream is important to the readers as it shows that the 3 characters really want to achieve their dream and own land, especially when Lennie keeps asking George to repeat the dream. This also shows George and Lennie have been dreaming for this land for a while and are so desperate to achieve their dream. In Of Mice and Men, Curly’s wife dreams of escaping to a better place other than being on a ranch all day. This is important for two reasons, the first reason is that she is the only woman on the ranch and show that as we do not know her name she is treated as an object and so makes readers think that women in those times were treated like objects too. Secondly Curly’s wife does not want to live there and has to find things to do so she does not get bored. Women are treated as objects and house workers in Of Mice and Men and this does not give a positive attitude towards women. In Death of a Salesman the idea of escaping to different lives is show much more. Willy wants to move towards a much happier, freer life but also he wants his sons Happy and Biff to escape to a place of their own too. Willy wants to escape to a job that earns him lots of money, one in which he enjoys doing, like a Salesman. Willy does not like the sales job he currently has because he has to travel too far and does not receive the respect he believes he deserves. Willy uses different dreams to remember the past, when he was happier and freer. Biff Loman has a dream of escaping to the West to work with his hands because he cannot ignore his instincts which tell him to abandon Willy’s paralysing dreams. Overall in Of Mice and Men and Death of a Salesman the idea of escapism from different characters are the same and similarly for the reason of a better life.
Dreams are not always a good idea to have.
In Of Mice and Men Lennie found out the hard way. When he killed Curly’s wife, George told him that if he got into trouble he should run away back to the deep green pool of the Salinas River where he stayed the night before they arrived at the ranch. When Lennie got there he started having hallucinations, he started hearing voices of his old Aunt Clara but in his own voice about how bad he had been treating George and how nice George had been to look after him “ he been doin’ nice things for you alla time. When he got a piece a pie you always got half or more un half. An, if there was any ketchup why he’d give it all to you “. This is important to the readers because even though it is from his Aunt Clara’s view it was actually from Lennie’s. “And when she spoke it was from Lennie’s voice “. This shows that Lennie knew he had done wrong and knew that George would be disappointed in him. Also in Of Mice and Men Lennie has more hallucinations after hearing Aunt Clair “Aunt Clara was gone out of Lennie’s head there came a gigantic rabbit “. Lennie was very fond of rabbits but the rabbits starting having a go at Lennie and Lennie started denying it. “Tend rabbits it said, scornfully, you crazy bastard, you ain’t fit to lick the boots of no rabbits, you’d forget em and let em go hungry, that’s what you’ll do. And then what would George think. I would not forget them, Lennie said loudly”. This is important because it shows however much you dream or however much you like animals you can be let down. In Death of a Salesman, Willy gets flashbacks of the past and most of the
flashbacks are where he had taken the wrong road in life not to succeed. Arthur Miller uses the use of psychic time to represent Willy Loman as a salesman who is in a trapped dream of doing well which is now leading him to being ill and eventually leading him to commit suicide. The use of psychic time represents Willy in a different way and we work out from this time what went wrong in the past and how different it is to his life now in the play. Even though the use of psychic time is not an obvious nightmare dream as in Of Mice and Men it still is. Willy uses the use of psychic time to get himself out of situations that he does not want to be in.
Dreams are used negatively in Death of a Salesman and of mice and men. Most of these negative dreams are portrayed by having a lost dream, having no dream or having a failed dream. In of mice and men these dreams are used by the characters of Curly's wife, Crooks and Candy, Crooks has the strongest dream and the most different. Crooks is the black stable buck and is the only permanent employee at the ranch. As Crook's has the only permanent job on the ranch he has seen men like George and Lennie come and go, all dreaming of buying a piece of land but is not cynical to these dreams, as nobody has ever achieved it. Crooks dreams of being seen as equal to everyone else, he knows his civil rights. He remembers fondly of his childhood, when he played with the white children who came to his family chicken ranch and longs for a similar relationship with white people again. This is the sense of a lost dream and as of mice and men was written in 1937, influential figures like Martin Luther King did not start there civil rights campaign until 1960 and did not get his message across until he died on April 4th, 1968 but that was after the end of the wall street crash, and everything was better for Americans. Curly's wife has a failed dream in Of Mice and Men. Curly's wife is newly married to Curly and we never know her name so she is merely Curly's property with no individual identity. Her dream was to become a movie star. Her hopes were raised when she was a teenager and a man claimed he would take her to Hollywood, but when she didn't receive a letter from him, she married Curly. In Death of a Salesman this dream is shown differently and once. It is more about failing in life and betraying others. Arthur Miller uses the characters of Willy Loman and Biff Loman to show this dream. At the start of the play Willy's primary obsession is what he considers to be Biff's betrayal of his ambitions for him. When Biff walks out on Willy's ambitions for him, Willy takes this rejection as a personal affront and assumes that he failed to sell him on the American Dream which he is trapped in.
In modern day society we see people go through mistakes, pain and lose money whilst they attempt to have a glamorous life. The two books Death of a Salesman and Of Mice and Men show that everybody seems to go through emotions at one point or another and all seem to have a location in life where everything seems like a black hole that's going nowhere.
In the book Of Mice and Men, and Death of a Salesman, we see this is common. The stories are very different because no story is ever the same between people’s lives. In these two pieces, it is apparent that one of the main themes is struggle. Steinbeck and Miller both portray the worries, the want, and hurt of trying to get the ultimate American Dream.
Even though they are two different books, there are similarities between them. For instance George from of mice and men and willy from Death of a Salesman tend to share common ground as they are both striving to make sure their family or friend is doing well. George does what he can to protect Lennie throughout the book, while Willy does what he can to protect his family. There are lots of similarities and differences in the two books but they both lead to the same theme of tragedy because they were trapped in a dream, In Of Mice and Men it was Lennie and in Death of a salesman it was Willy.
Explore the ways that Arthur Miller and John Steinbeck use dreams in Of Mice and Men and Death of a Salesman –
Dreams are used throughout Death of a Salesman and Of Mice and Men. Both authors Miller and Steinbeck use dreams but from different perspective, different context and different backgrounds. John Steinbeck, before he became an author worked in a farm as a farm labourer and also worked at a sugar plant and a was a fruit picker in the West of America, in California, where most of his inspiration for his books such as The Pearl, East of Eden and Of Mice and Men took place. It was from the people on the farms that help influence his characters, additionally Steinbeck’s experiences of working at these farms had made him ask the question of ‘Can People achieve their personal dream in life’? Arthur Miller was from a wealthy family until 1929 in the Wall Street crash when his family lost all their fortune. As a consequence of this, his family moved away to Brooklyn. Miller helped his family out by delivering bread to help pay back what his family once had. It was because of this event that Miller wrote his plays, mainly about his past. He uses dreams to illustrate what his family wanted after the Wall Street crash.
The American Dream is a dream of a piece of land or property in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. The American Dream is a major part of the lives in Death of a Salesman, and Of Mice and Men characters. Both books use the American Dream but portray the dreams differently. The main dream in Of Mice and Men is of the characters George, Lennie and Candy going out west and finding a piece of land that they can work on and not have to be bossed around. Miller used this dream to express George and Lennie’s further by showing that George actually cares about Lennie and wants to protect him from trouble and therefore buying some land would be a good way of excluding Lennie from the public eye but still making him happy and safe. Lennie’s part of the dream is his addition of stroking soft things like puppies and rabbits and therefore on the land would have a job to stroke and look after the rabbits. Candy’s contribution for this dream is to help pay for a little of the ranch in return for living there as a retirement home when he is older. This makes the dream more achievable but when Lennie kills Curly’s wife, Candy knows who it was, and was devastated and furious as he knows that they have lost their chance of achieving their dream. This style of American Dream is different in Death of a Salesman as it focusses on owning a nice house, have free time, good jobs and lots of money. This is what Willy is trying to achieve and believes that if one works hard enough he will be rewarded. This reality for Willy does not help him by his perfect brother Ben who is a good example of Willy’s idea of the American Dream by owning large sections of land and a diamond mine when he was alive. Miller writes Death of a Salesman in a way that is not about achieving the American Dream but failing to achieve the American Dream. Miller writes and makes Willy think his dream can be achieved through having lots of money. Further on in the book it shows what the American Dream has done to Willy and Linda but also to George and Lennie as it makes Willy become more distant from his wife Linda who was very devoted to him and also George moves further away from Lennie after realising Lennie has no chance of surviving in this world.
Each character has different dreams and these dreams are used for escaping into different, happier and freer lives. In Of Mice and Men the escaping dreams are George, Lennie and Candy’s dream of owning a little patch of land and live on it in freedom. This dream is important to the readers as it shows that the 3 characters really want to achieve their dream and own land, especially when Lennie keeps asking George to repeat the dream. This also shows George and Lennie have been dreaming for this land for a while and are so desperate to achieve their dream. In Of Mice and Men, Curly’s wife dreams of escaping to a better place other than being on a ranch all day. This is important for two reasons, the first reason is that she is the only woman on the ranch and show that as we do not know her name she is treated as an object and so makes readers think that women in those times were treated like objects too. Secondly Curly’s wife does not want to live there and has to find things to do so she does not get bored. Women are treated as objects and house workers in Of Mice and Men and this does not give a positive attitude towards women. In Death of a Salesman the idea of escaping to different lives is show much more. Willy wants to move towards a much happier, freer life but also he wants his sons Happy and Biff to escape to a place of their own too. Willy wants to escape to a job that earns him lots of money, one in which he enjoys doing, like a Salesman. Willy does not like the sales job he currently has because he has to travel too far and does not receive the respect he believes he deserves. Willy uses different dreams to remember the past, when he was happier and freer. Biff Loman has a dream of escaping to the West to work with his hands because he cannot ignore his instincts which tell him to abandon Willy’s paralysing dreams. Overall in Of Mice and Men and Death of a Salesman the idea of escapism from different characters are the same and similarly for the reason of a better life.
Dreams are not always a good idea to have. In Of Mice and Men Lennie found out the hard way. When he killed Curly’s wife, George told him that if he got into trouble he should run away back to the deep green pool of the Salinas River where he stayed the night before they arrived at the ranch. When Lennie got there he started having hallucinations, he started hearing voices of his old Aunt Clara but in his own voice about how bad he had been treating George and how nice George had been to look after him “ he been doin’ nice things for you alla time. When he got a piece a pie you always got half or more un half. An, if there was any ketchup why he’d give it all to you “. This is important to the readers because even though it is from his Aunt Clara’s view it was actually from Lennie’s. “And when she spoke it was from Lennie’s voice “. This shows that Lennie knew he had done wrong and knew that George would be disappointed in him. Also in Of Mice and Men Lennie has more hallucinations after hearing Aunt Clair “Aunt Clara was gone out of Lennie’s head there came a gigantic rabbit “. Lennie was very fond of rabbits but the rabbits starting having a go at Lennie and Lennie started denying it. “Tend rabbits it said, scornfully, you crazy bastard, you ain’t fit to lick the boots of no rabbits, you’d forget em and let em go hungry, that’s what you’ll do. And then what would George think. I would not forget them, Lennie said loudly”. This is important because it shows however much you dream or however much you like animals you can be let down. In Death of a Salesman, Willy gets flashbacks of the past and most of the flashbacks are where he had taken the wrong road in life not to succeed. Arthur Miller uses the use of psychic time to represent Willy Loman as a salesman who is in a trapped dream of doing well which is now leading him to being ill and eventually leading him to commit suicide. The use of psychic time represents Willy in a different way and we work out from this time what went wrong in the past and how different it is to his life now in the play. Even though the use of psychic time is not an obvious nightmare dream as in Of Mice and Men it still is. Willy uses the use of psychic time to get himself out of situations that he does not want to be in.
Dreams are used negatively in Death of a Salesman and of mice and men. Most of these negative dreams are portrayed by having a lost dream, having no dream or having a failed dream. In of mice and men these dreams are used by the characters of Curly's wife, Crooks and Candy, Crooks has the strongest dream and the most different. Crooks is the black stable buck and is the only permanent employee at the ranch. As Crook's has the only permanent job on the ranch he has seen men like George and Lennie come and go, all dreaming of buying a piece of land but is not cynical to these dreams, as nobody has ever achieved it. Crooks dreams of being seen as equal to everyone else, he knows his civil rights. He remembers fondly of his childhood, when he played with the white children who came to his family chicken ranch and longs for a similar relationship with white people again. This is the sense of a lost dream and as of mice and men was written in 1937, influential figures like Martin Luther King did not start there civil rights campaign until 1960 and did not get his message across until he died on April 4th, 1968 but that was after the end of the wall street crash, and everything was better for Americans. Curly's wife has a failed dream in Of Mice and Men. Curly's wife is newly married to Curly and we never know her name so she is merely Curly's property with no individual identity. Her dream was to become a movie star. Her hopes were raised when she was a teenager and a man claimed he would take her to Hollywood, but when she didn't receive a letter from him, she married Curly. In Death of a Salesman this dream is shown differently and once. It is more about failing in life and betraying others. Arthur Miller uses the characters of Willy Loman and Biff Loman to show this dream. At the start of the play Willy's primary obsession is what he considers to be Biff's betrayal of his ambitions for him. When Biff walks out on Willy's ambitions for him, Willy takes this rejection as a personal affront and assumes that he failed to sell him on the American Dream which he is trapped in.
In modern day society we see people go through mistakes, pain and lose money whilst they attempt to have a glamorous life. The two books Death of a Salesman and Of Mice and Men show that everybody seems to go through emotions at one point or another and all seem to have a location in life where everything seems like a black hole that's going nowhere.
In the book Of Mice and Men, and Death of a Salesman, we see this is common. The stories are very different because no story is ever the same between people’s lives. In these two pieces, it is apparent that one of the main themes is struggle. Steinbeck and Miller both portray the worries, the want, and hurt of trying to get the ultimate American Dream.
Even though they are two different books, there are similarities between them. For instance George from of mice and men and willy from Death of a Salesman tend to share common ground as they are both striving to make sure their family or friend is doing well. George does what he can to protect Lennie throughout the book, while Willy does what he can to protect his family. There are lots of similarities and differences in the two books but they both lead to the same theme of tragedy because they were trapped in a dream, In Of Mice and Men it was Lennie and in Death of a salesman it was Willy.