"The American dream is for everyman to have a place of his own and earn a position of respect, to become whatever his will, determination and hard work can make him. In Of Mice and Men the land becomes a talisman, a hope of better things." Discuss the American dream as it is presented in this novel.
In Of Mice and Men all the characters have a dream. The American dream was a dream for many migrants heading from Europe to America. America was seen as the land of opportunity, a chance to get a piece of land and earn a living. It offered people a better standard of living.
The Wall Street crash occurred in 1929 when the stock markets plummeted causing 15 million people in America to become unemployed. During the 1930s, America suffered unprecedented droughts, causing acres of farmland to be left baron in a great dust bowl. This period of time was also known as the Great Depression. This affected the whole World for ten years. Men became desperate for work and would do anything to get a job, because of the need for work employers began exploiting their workers but the workers thought that it was better to have poor pay than none at all.
During the 1930s writers such as Steinbeck broke away from the usual style of writing for the time. He began to explore the lives of migrant workers. This was new at the time as writers began to write books about and for lower and middle class citizens.
Workers at this time had to find their own ways to amuse themselves, which usually involved the whorehouse, drinking, playing pool and playing horse-shoes. Steinbeck portrays, this well, showing the bona fide life of the itinerant workers:.
"Jus the usual thing. We go to old Susy's place.".
This shows the reader that the employees work a hard week and on the Saturday night they take their pay and go straight to the whorehouse and spend all their money for that week. The reality of life for the migrant workers was bleak, lonely and purposeless.