How does Steinbeck present the American Dream in the novella?
Introduction
Define the American Dream as the belief that hard work leads to land, independence and self-determination. Thesis: Steinbeck presents the Dream as both a necessary psychological survival mechanism and a cruel illusion that the novella’s cyclical structure was always going to deny.
Paragraph 1
Point: The Dream is introduced as a ritual between George and Lennie, repeated rather than planned.
"An’ live off the fatta the lan’."
Explanation: The phrase is Lennie’s refrain, learned by heart. Steinbeck presents the Dream as a verbal ritual — a story told for comfort rather than a realistic ambition. Its repetition sustains the men emotionally.
Link: Context: during the Great Depression, itinerant workers had almost no chance of buying land, making the Dream a shared fiction of the era.
Paragraph 2
Point: Candy’s investment makes the Dream briefly concrete, which paradoxically signals its death.
"Le’s get that place now."
Explanation: The moment the Dream becomes financially possible is, in Steinbeck’s fatalistic structure, the moment it begins to collapse. Candy’s urgency is driven by the loss of his dog — he needs a reason to live.
Link: Steinbeck structures the novella so that hope and disaster are tightly interlocked: the Dream peaks in Chapter 3 and dies in Chapter 5.
Paragraph 3
Point: Curley’s wife’s Hollywood dream is a gendered variant of the same illusion.
"I coulda made somethin’ of myself. Maybe I will yet."
Explanation: Her dream is no less unrealistic than George’s farm. Steinbeck shows that the American Dream fails women as thoroughly as it fails men, but through different mechanisms — marriage rather than employment traps her.
Link: Link to the Burns epigraph: all "best laid schemes" in the novella are defeated, regardless of the dreamer.
Conclusion
Steinbeck presents the American Dream as emotionally essential but structurally doomed. The novella’s cyclical form, returning to the same pool where the Dream was first told, confirms that the Dream was always a story, not a plan.