Common Themes In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

One of the many themes in John Steinbeck’s novella “Of Mice and Men” is the dreams that people have. Steinbeck's novella is set around the time of the Great Depression in America. It was the longest, most widespread, and deepest depression of the 20th century. Unemployment in the U.S. rose to 25% and hundreds of thousands of Americans found themselves homeless, and began congregating in shanty towns that began to appear across the country. This meant many of these citizens were forced into itinerancy. The author chose his own birthplace, The Salinas Valley, to portray this tale of a broken society and the dreams that men chase to survive this misery. All of the characters in the novella have a dream, a dream to get out of itinerancy and own
The amount of racial oppression he has lived with, he has learnt to be utterly pessimistic like everyone he cannot resist the thought and the temptation of his dreams coming true. Crooks suffers racially, physically and mentally. He has lived through racial oppression for most of his life. He was ‘kicked in the back by a horse’. And finally he is an intellectual human being, he reads because it gives him a sense of insanity. Alternatively he could be reading because his body has given up and that it is his only way of staying alive through the oppression. His life is enslaved by his work, as he lives with the horses and the ‘chains and leather of the bridles’. All he wants is freedom. A life that mimics his childhood ‘playing’ with the ‘other’ children, even though his ‘ol’ man’ didn’t approve. He ‘never’ realized why. ‘But now I know’. This one simple phrase enlightens us into a life of racial prejudice and suffering. A life where dreams are not an option and not a reality but a story told by others. We are presented with a character that has lost all hope. It is clear that he once had a dream but he has realised that it causes him less emotional distraught to realise that they are ‘never’ achievable no matter how ‘confident’ you are with trying to achieve it. And he explains this to Lennie when Lennie is explaining about his ‘big’ dream. ‘Nobody ever goes to heaven, and nobody never gets no land...’ This also shows that Crooks has lost all hope in God. No ‘heaven’ means no God, no paradise and no hope for Crooks. He has lost all belief in living life and become utterly nihilistic. However, Candy gets the man excited about the dream farm, to the point where Crooks could fancy himself worthy and equal enough to be in on the plan with the guys. He offers them “a hand to work for nothing”. Crooks is then brought back to reality and once again loses all faith after Curley’s wife