Dreams Definition In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

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Dreams: noun. a cherished aspiration, ambition, or ideal. In John Steinbeck’s novella, Of Mice and Men, the concept dreams, is repeatedly talked about. Dreams are mentioned by many of the characters, including the main character Lennie Small. Ever since Lennie’s, Aunt Clara passed away, George Milton has been the one who takes care of Lennie; he is almost like his big-brother figure. Together, they go around looking for work as ranch hands. At a small ranch in Soledad, the two men find jobs. A steady occupation is not the only thing they are looking for; they are also looking to fulfill their dream of buying their own farm where they can live off the fat of the land, but due to unfortunate circumstances, things don’t go as planned. Lennies mental disabilities are the cause of his failed dreams.
The beginning of the novella starts out with Steinbeck explaining how Lennie and George get kicked out of Weed, and how they are attempting to escape the angry towns
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For example, the story explains that when Lennie still lived with his diseased Aunt Clara, she would give him live mice. Repeatedly, Lennie would squeeze them so hard that their necks would break, and the small, fragile rodents, would die. “ ‘They was so little,’ he said apologetically. ‘I’d pet em’ and pretty soon they bit my fingers and I pinched their heads a little and then they was dead—because they was so little’ ” (11). This occurrence foreshadows Curley’s wife’s death, because Lennie is simply feeling her hair and gets too aggressive and snaps her neck, which is almost exactly what happened to the mice earlier in the novella. Lennie’s aggression is a recurring pattern, two examples are when Lennie crushes Curley’s hand, and when he kills the poor puppy. All of these show how Lennie’s incapability to think things through and know when to stop affected his fate and is overall the cause of his own