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Glass Half Empty:Analysis of the American Dream in Of Mice and Men

It's 1937, in the middle of the Great Depression. There are migrant workers with few job opportunities. Disability and prejudice lead to no respect and no pride. You are a nobody traveling alone and it is your own fault. There is no one to blame, or lean on for help. It was a desperate time for all working class Americans. Struggling to make a stake, let alone make ends meet. It is a constant cycle for some, get a job, make a stake, blow it, and repeat. In a dark time like this nobody would dare to think that they could make it out. The price of living is high, and never stops rising. Many will never make it, and many have lost hope trying. In John Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men, two men are stuck in the middle of it all. Everyone travels alone, with no companionship, except for these two men. George and Lennie are a very rare pair. The brain, and the brainless, they’ve stuck together through it all. The idea of “The American Dream” is only something a lunatic would even start to believe in.

In the beginning, some might call Lennie a lunatic, others call him a helpless dreamer. As seen in the following, “Guys like us are the loneliest guys…”’,Lennie was delighted “Thats it!” (14). As George begins to tell Lennie the story of “their future” for the thousandth time it seems. As Lennie listens, he gets wide eyed, and listens excitedly. George tells him of the ranch they’ll have, how they’ll live off the “fatta the lan’”, and the rabbits. Lennie’s mind completely revolves around the rabbits. Lennie dreams, and dreams. He believes that all of what George is saying will happen, he doesn’t know any better. Even though George knows that it never will come true. Aside from his disbelief, he still plays along for Lennie’s sake.

Likewise, nobody believes that Lennie and George will ever make it to their dream. It’s seen when Lennie begins telling Crooks about the ranch, and the rabbits, Crooks responds, “You’re nuts, you're crazy as a wedge”(74). Even though Lennie sincerely believes that his dream is most definitely a reality, while others can see how unrealistic it really is. It is proven again here when Candy goes on to tell Curley’s wife about the dream. Candy states, “‘We got our own land, and it's ours, an’ we c’n go to it.’” To which Curley's wife responds, “‘Baloney!’” (79). Society is not on their side, everyone is constantly down their dream. All though, those with fully functioning minds know that it is ridiculous.

With all of this in mind, the key factor to get to the American dream is to be born into it. Candy states to George that Curley “Won’t ever get canned cause his old man’s the boss” (27). Curley will never be thrown off the farm, since his father owns it. He can do whatever he wants, and he does. Unlike those who have to work to live a mediocre life, Curley can slack off, and live in “the lap of luxury”. People born into nothing have to continually fight for themselves. All in all, they will never have the comfort of doing what they want, or living the life they'd choose to live.

No reassurance, or encouragement. A time of misery, and melancholy. You are isolated, and have been abandoned. The “American Dream” is an unattainable idea of something that will never be an option to men of this kind. Those with fully functioning minds can comprehend the faint actuality of this idea, and all of its nonsense. It is known that to actually achieve the dream you must be born into wealth. Without family inheritance you would have a very small chance of ever making it out of this rut that all men of the working class are faced with. Especially when you add in disabilities, including physical, and mental. In John Steinbeck’s novella, Of Mice and Men, society has pounded it into the heads of all its inhabitants that they will not make it. Resulting with the only outlook on life, would be one completely biased by pessimism.