Distrust And The American Dream

Distrust And The American Dream

Dreams and trust are two things that make life more livable. Without dreams you have nothing to work towards and without trust you have no friends you can rely on. The impossibility of the American dream and the general attitude of distrust people can have Steinbeck brings into light in his novel, Of Mice and Men. He uses empathy towards characters and situation to show that a change in these parts of society is needed.

The main characters, George and Lenny, start the story looking for more work in another farm once there, the first person to question the trust and friendship between George and Lenny is their new boss, who said "I never seen one guy take so much trouble for another guy" (p.43). He thought that maybe George was swiping Lenny's pay because Lenny is not that bright. The distrust continues throughout the story with Curly and his wife. She is bored with life on the farm and is always starting trouble with the farm hands, causing Curly to not have much trust as he should in his own wife. Barely any of the farm hands trust each other either. One actually points out that the farm hands were "scared of each other, that the other might get something on you" (p.85).

Almost all of the characters have some form of the American dream in them, or at least once had it in them. George and Lenny have the most prominent and repetitious throughout the story. Their dream was of owning their own piece of land, and having the freedom over themselves to do what the wanted, when they wanted, and not having to answer to anyone on their actions. Some of the other farm hands fall into this dream after hearing it, including Crooks and Candy. Both Crooks and Candy latch onto George and Lenny's dream and ask to be apart of it when they took action on it. But even though the American dream itself is a great vision, the underlying tradition of its impossibility is what Steinbeck tells of in the story. Crooks scolds the men for their dreams before he is taking into it by saying "I seen hundreds of men come by with the same thing in their heads...everyone of 'em's got a little piece of land in his head. An' never