Dreams Tell Us Lies: Of Mice And Men By John Steinbeck

Dreams Tell Us Lies: Results Are Always Unknown

For people, foresight will always be in vain. It's funny because humans always expect hard work to be payed in freedom; however, that's not how it always happens. In this world people’s expectations are not always at the same level as the result, like rolling a die from a bag always has an unknown outcome. John Steinbeck uses the title of his book, Of Mice and Men as a reference to a line in Robert Burns eloquent poem “To a Mouse” stating “The best laid schemes of mice and men often go askew, and leave us nothing but pain and grief” (39). With this reference, Steinbeck uses three figures Lennie, George, and Curley's wife from the 1930’s Great Depression to prove that despite hard-work and hope,

However, Steinbeck foreshadowed that that dream wasn’t going to become a reality from the very beginning. For example, while George and Lennie are roasting beans, Lennie complains about not having ketchup, and George retorts, “God a’mighty, if I was alone I could live so easy. I could get a job an’ work, an’ no trouble. No mess at all, and when the end of the month come I could take my fifty back and go into town and get whatever I want” (11) Lennie puts such a burden on George, but without Lennie, the dream would be pointless. George also refers to Lennie a “mess”. The word “mess”, is specifying to the fact Lennie is in need of extra care or more responsibility. For George, he is another hardship to be lifted. Therefore, since Lennie is part of that dream they both plan on bombarding, and he is supposedly a

Feeling empty is often a sign that someone hasn’t tried reaching their dream or their goal. Perhaps they have just given up like Curley’s wife does. Likewise, while Curley's wife is in Crook’s cabin complaining about the boys being rude, Lennie says, “We got our own lan’, and it’s ours, an we c’n go to it” and Curley’s wife laughs at him, “Baloney” she says, “ I seen too many of you guys. If you had two bits in the worl’, why you’d be gettin’ two shots of corn with it and suckin’ the bottom of the glass?” (79). Curley’s wife already knows that Lennie and George’s dream is corrupted even through the hard work they’d put in because Curley’s wife experienced a similar aspect when not achieving her goal. As a matter of fact, when Curley’s wife is lonely and Lennie is all she has to talk to she concedes, “And because she had confided in him, she moved closer to Lennie and sat beside him. ‘Coulda been in the movies, an’ had nice clothe- all them nice clothes like they wear. An’ I could sat in them big hotels, an’ had pitchers took of me. When they had them previews I could went to them, an’ spole in the radio, an’ it wouldn’ta cost me a cent because I was in the pitcher. An’ all them nice clothes like they wear. Because this guy says I was a natural’”(89). Curley’s wife has the capacity to achieve her dream, but it