Context OMAM

Context is very important to Of Mice and Men.  It helps us to understand why the characters are presented the way they are and how we're supposed to react to them.
The American Dream

The American Dream consists of owning your own land and being self-sufficient.  This ideal is shared by millions of Americans to this day.  Throughout OMAM the characters are searching for their own land and are trying to save together the money in order to achieve their dream.

However, when the text was set, in the 1930s, the Great Depression was sweeping the world, which meant that it became harder for people to achieve their dreams, as money and jobs were scarce, meaning that saving was virtually impossible (which is what George and Lennie face).

The beginning of the text, OMAM sets an idyllic scene - is this a metaphor for the American Dream - that this places exists but is hard to find or impossible to live in once obtained?

 

Throughout the text, George continually discusses their shared dream.  When George does, his voice changes and becomes trance-like, where he is receiting a bed time story almost to Lennie.

 

 

 

However, at the end of the text, when George is telling Lennie about the dream for the last time, his voice becomes monotonal and loses all of it's dream-like qualities.  George is realising that their dream will never come true and is just using the story to calm Lennie before killing him.