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Teachers & SchoolsVisions of America
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Of Mice and Men's America is filled with dreamers and strugglers, who all have a different idea of what life should be: Hollywood, a quiet ranch, the pages of a pulp magazine. What all these visions have in common in their absolute impossibility. The wanna-be starlet never will be; the quiet ranch is just a bedtime story; the magazine is just peddling advertisements. Does the novel suggest that there's no such thing as the American dream? Or does that real America of hope and possibility exist somewhere just over the horizon?
George and Lennie's dream is the quintessential American Dream of independence and freedom: their dream could be anyone's.
This novel argues that there is no single America. Rather, there are many different groups (women, black people, farm workers), each with its own unique struggle.