<Essay about ‘Of Mice and Men’>

<Essay about ‘Of Mice and Men’>

If someone reminds you of the ‘American Dream’, I’m pretty sure that majority of us will think of words such as freedom, dream, hope, and others like that. Ironically, the realistic image wasn’t like that at all. Here, in ‘OF mice and men’, writer John Steinbeck recalls the ‘American Dream’back to us, while revealing its true aspects. My essay will be mostly about the dream, the idea which Steinbeck wanted to accuse of. Since it’s one of my favorites, I guarantee some novelty of this.

To begin with, the climax is definitely at p.105, when George finally kills Lennie with a Lugar pistol. At there, Lennie begs, “Let’s do it now. Let’s get that place now.” “Sure, right now. I gotta. We gotta.”Then, George shoots Lennie with a gun. This passage could represent many different things, but the most obvious one is that these lines stand for George’s happy dream of ‘living fatta offa the lan’ collapsing and never coming back to him. Clear enough, Lennie’s life ends right before George is about to answer about their main part of their dream; here, his death means the end of the dream. Moreover, when he hesitates at Lennie’s last question, he slowly draws his gun. At the moment, George is aware of all the consequences which will be following if he pulls the trigger; all of his or Lennie’s dreams, such as tending rabbits or having a nice house, will be gone. However, he pulls it, and this means he chose to give up the dreams by his decisions. It’s very weird, since he chose to achieve his dream, and now he’s just giving it up. So this means George was fooled by his dreams, or, he was greatly deceived by the dreams of the era.

George worked hard enough to achieve his dream, and he was really close to it. He had plans for the future, such as depositing money in the local bank and not using them. That’s quite unique from normal ranch-workers at the time. They also had dreams, like ‘every westerners’ dreams’,which Steinbeck mentioned, and worked hard, too. But they didn’t worry about the future. In this aspect, George was very different from them. Ironic, but he also ends up with his broken dream. He couldn’t achieve his goals. Isn’t it strange, that George didn’t do anything wrong by himself but couldn’t achieve his dream because of external factors? Or isn’t it even stranger that George was very different from ordinary workers but failed to accomplish? In whatever the intention is, this situation can be interpreted as that this dream was very hard to get, or it was almost nothing; impossible to achieve.

‘The dream’ of George and others is the main topic. It’s ‘the dream’ that is making up this story, since if you summarize ‘Of mice and men’ into one sentence, it could be ‘two men build up their dreams and work in ranches to accomplish it, but there’s some tragedy and their dreams are destroyed.’ In my opinion, the dream that John Steinbeck wrote is the ‘American Dream’ which was widespread among workers at that era. The American Dream is defined as “a kind of dream workers had during the time; like earning lots of money and living in a fine place someplace nice.” Many workers had this dream, and Steinbeck proves it by mentioning at the beginning of the novella about some magazines which made me think of the American Dream; “some kind of dream many westerners had.” It sure sounds like something which could be achieved, doesn’t it? However, George who worked hard doesn’t, and the story ends as a catastrophe; Lennie dead and George in pain because of mental impact. By the ending of the story, his real purpose can be seen; he denies the American Dream and thinks that the American Dream is just an illusion for plain workers. Throughout this, what John Steinbeck is trying to tell us is that the ‘American Dream’, was a fantasy for almost all of the people, and many were fooled by their fake dreams, and furthermore, the American Dream was a great fabrication.

Have you enjoyed my essay? So, my conclusion is that Steinbeck’s intention and the most important idea in ‘Of mice and men’ is that the dream, the American Dream, which was popular at the time, was a big lie. The story’s messages can be various, but I think the one which should be most focused is this one.