Shattered Dreams
Shattered dreams play a large part in ‘Of mice and men.’ In the book, due to difficult economic times caused by the Wall Street crash, many people live lives with unfulfilled dreams, and try to hide their dream from the world, with the exception of George and Lennie.
George and Lennie have a dream to set up a farm, and live independently ‘off the fat of the land’. Lennie and George are different in their approach to the dream - they mostly believe they can make it happen because there are two of them together, and sometimes it is how George keeps Lennie going. Unlike the rest of the characters in the book, Lennie’s primary concern is his dream - ‘George ain’t gonna let me tend no rabbits now.’ However, by the end of the book, George and Lennie’s dream is unable to come true, and George becomes like the rest of the workers on the ranch, lonely and having had his dreams shattered.
Candy dreams of an easy old-age, where he can be sure of his future and place, unlike on the farm where he doesn’t have much worth because he’s old and crippled, and when George and Lennie come along, he dreams of going up with them on their own farm, being able to help out but still ensured a safe place. Candy’s money seems to make this dream even more likely to come true, but in the end it is shattered when Lennie kills Curley’s wife. ’You an’ me can get that little place, can’t we, George? You an’ me can go there an’ live nice, can’t we, George? Can’t we?’
Crooks, the only black worker on the farm, has a dream about having company and being treated equally, regardless of his skin colour. He tries to hide his desire for company by being grouchy and angry, but when Lennie comes in he is secretly delighted. He talks about how when he was young, he used to play with the children next door - ‘The white kids come to play at our place, an’ sometimes I went to play with them, and some of them was pretty nice. My ol’ man didn’t like that. I never knew why till long later why he didn’t like that. But now I know.’ He dreams of having this relationship with white people again, but he is instead constantly excluded and isolated, and denied his rights as a human being.
Curley’s wife had a dream as a young girl to become an actress, which she held onto in later life, even until death. When she was young, she met a man who said he would take her to Hollywood and she would become famous. She waited for a letter from this man, but it never came. She was eventually forced to give up on her dream, and so she settled with Curley and decided to marry him. However, even in her unhappy marriage she clung onto her dream, shown when she opens up to Lennie - ‘coulda been in the movies, an’ had nice clothes- all them nice clothes like they wear’.
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