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1) In a country where liberty, freedom and the land of opportunity is a pivotal part of American society the American dream is born. The dream was of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunities for each according to ability or achievement, the American dream was targeted at poor people who wanted to have a better future. The American dream is fundamentally the notation that no matter your race, religion, sex or social class if you work hard in America you will achieve materialistic wealth. Steinbeck's novel, Of Mice and Men sets in the 1930's, the time of the great depression and depicts the flaws of the American Dream. Some of the themes in the novel include friendship, death, jealousy and loneliness. The exploration of this essay shall consist of me focussing on the theme of the American Dream by exploring the characters, George and Lennie, Candy, Crooks, Curley and his wife
2) Most of the characters in Of Mice and Men admit, at one point or another, to dreaming of a different life. Before her death, Curley’s wife confesses her desire to be a movie star. Crooks, bitter as he is, allows himself the pleasant fantasy of hoeing a patch of garden on Lennie’s farm one day, and Candy latches on desperately to George’s vision of owning a couple of acres. Before the action of the story begins, circumstances have robbed most of the characters of these wishes. Curley’s wife, for instance, has resigned herself to an unfulfilling marriage. What makes all of these dreams typically American is that the dreamers wish for untarnished happiness, for the freedom to follow their own desires. George and Lennie’s dream of owning a farm, which would enable them to sustain themselves, and, most important, offer them protection from an inhospitable world, represents a prototypically American ideal. Their journey, which awakens George to the impossibility of this dream, sadly proves that the bitter Crooks is right: such paradises of

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