Analysis: Of Mice And Men

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Dreams keep people going. The dreams keep pushing people forward and allow them to believe their dreams can improve their ways of living. They want the good life of no worries about money and having nice things. This is the American Dream. In Of Mice and Men George and Lennie have the dream of getting their own farm. This dream keeps them moving forward, working with a purpose. They kept going together with this dream for a very long time, and without it, who knows where they would be. Without their American Dream, George and Lennie would not have been driven as much as they were. They would not have kept going and made it as far as they did. In Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech “I Have a Dream,” he explains how he would like everyone …show more content…
This realization can be hard on them, making them give up hope completely and stop trying to achieve a better life. In “The Necklace” Mathilde has the dream of becoming wealthy and having nice things. She dreams of not worrying about money anymore or having to work hard for money. After having to buy the necklace Mathilde had to work every day of her life knowing that the money she was earning was going toward paying off her debt and essentials like food and rent. She would never achieve her dream. This sent her into a stage of hopelessness. Once Mathilde lost her money, she had to work very hard in the house: “She came to know the heavy work of the house, the hateful duties of the kitchen. She washed the plates, wearing out her pink nails on the coarse pottery and the bottoms of pans” (Maupassant 5). She got used to doing very hard and laboring tasks even though she did not really want to and it was not her passion. She did it to pay off the debt and pay the bills. She gave up on her American Dream of not having to worry about money. She got into a cycle of doing the same thing over and over again. Mathilde gave up on living for fun. She kept doing what she needed to do to survive. Mathilde became depressed. Knowing that you will not be able to achieve your American Dream, can put you into a state of hopelessness. These texts show how the reality of the situation of not being able to reach the American Dream brought these people down. In Of Mice and Men the men working on the farms know that they are never going to get their own farm or really ever get out of the endless cycle of moving from job to job and always spending their money right away. They have gotten sucked into the cycle of no hope and knowledge of the impossibility of the American Dream for them. Crooks is speaking of his experiences with the people all coming with an American Dream: “I seen

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