Similarities Between Of Mice And Men And A Raisin In The Sun

A dream is precious and delicate but can be dangerous when we see the lengths people would go to achieving them. Readers see an example of this in Of Mice and Men, a novella written by John Steinbeck, that follows two migrant workers, Lennie and George, who travel from farm to farm looking for work. Lennie is cognitively impaired and mainly focuses on achieving his dream, and that dream is to tend soft-haired rabbits on the farm that he and George will live on in freedom. Similarly in A Raisin in the Sun, a play written by Lorraine Hansberry, Walter Lee, one of the main characters, struggles with being a man, providing for his family, being a black, and most of all following his dreams. Lennie, from Of Mice and Men, and Walter, from A Raisin in the Sun, both go to extreme lengths to achieve their dreams and bring

comfort to their lives, but in doing so they hurt the people around them causing their dreams to be further delayed.

Already having a bigger frame than the average man, Lennie does most things to the extreme, and attempting to further and protect his dream is no exception. Lennie dreams of comfort and his interpretations of comfort are rabbits. He aims to tend rabbits on a farm he and his friend George will own. Lennie is a very passionate man that is willing to do anything to secure his dreams. Readers are first introduced to this idea when Lennie says “you just let ‘em try to get the rabbits, I break their God damn necks I’ll…… I’ll smash ‘em with a stick “ (Steinbeck 57). In his own words, Lennie states what he is capable of and even willing to do to anything that stands between him and his dream. In that moment Lennie is acknowledging the fact that he might have to hurt people in order to protect his rabbits, intern his dream. Not only will Lennie go to extreme lengths in the name of his dreams but he even knows

it. An incident of Lennie taking things a bit too far in the name of his dream is when he hurts Curley's wife. Lennie begins stroking Curley's wife's hair but because of his build he uses more force than necessary. Starting to panic Curley's wife starts pleading with Lennie to stop and those pleas turned to screams. Frightened by her screams Lennie says “George gonna say I done a bad thing. He ain't gonna let me tend no rabbits” (Steinbeck 88). Curley's wife continues to scream and in an effort to silence her screams Lennie violently shakes her, breaking her neck in the process. Her screams are jeopardizing Lennie's dreams, if George were to hear Curley's wife's screams Lennie wouldnt tend the rabbits, which would've been devastation for Lennie because her screams meant the end of his dreams and hope comfort. Through his actions readers see the lengths Lennie would go to in pursuit of insuring his dream, and bringing comfort to his life.