George and Lennie encounter hostility and calamity, it seems, nearly everywhere they go. George and Lennie, then, appear to be fleeing a town where there’s nothing left for them, chasing their own dream even as they shut out the knowledge that there are countless people like them-many in their very own hometown-pursuing dreams just as broken and hopeless as their own. Families hoping to make their fortune in gold continued to flock to Auburn, and soon Auburn was overrun by people camping by the river, hoping to pan for gold in the water in light of the closed mines in town. Though little is known of George and Lennie’s background, it is clear that they grew up together in Auburn, a Gold Rush town that boomed in the late 1800s but suffered by the 1920s as gold prices dropped. In the midst of this sudden shift, many felt like the rug had been pulled out from under them-this sentiment and perspective is echoed in George and Lennie’s insistence on pursuing their dream of a peaceful, sustainable life of ease and independence even as they are in the depths of an economic crisis which threatens not just their plans, but their very lives. The Great Depression represented the end of an era of the American Dream-the artistic and economic innovation and prosperity of the “Roaring Twenties” came to a short, decisive stop, and American society went into crisis mode. Through Of Mice and Men, however, Steinbeck argues that while throughout American history-and especially during the Great Depression-the American Dream has at best been an illusion and at worst a trap, unattainable dreams are still necessary, in a way, to make life in America bearable. George and Lennie’s dream of working hard and saving enough money to buy their own farm and “live off the fatta the lan” symbolizes the concrete ways in which the American Dream serves as an idealized goal for poor and working-class Americans even in the darkest and hardest of times.
The American Dream of every individual’s right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” has been ingrained within American society since the writing of the Declaration of Independence, when the phrase made its first appearance.
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