The Theme Of Illusions In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

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Of Mice and Men Essay John Steinbeck’s novella, Of Mice and Men, illustrates the dreams of characters and turns them into illusions. The characters Lennie, Crooks and Candy all illustrate this in their own way. They all live on a work ranch with big dreams and hope for things far out of their reach. Lennie hope to own a ranch and tend to rabbits, and Crooks for something quite different: to end the racial discrimination that is being used towards him. Meanwhile Candy hopes for someone to hire him looking past old age and disability. All of these characters hope for something different, but all of them hope to get off the ranch and do something better with their life. Steinbeck uses Situational Irony to convey how these different characters have their own dreams that turn into illusions. This form of irony is expressed more throughout the book by showing that Lennie cannot maintain anything valuable to him because he will just destroy it. Lennie is always hoping to own a ranch with George and dreams to tend rabbits. But it will be impossible because Lennie will forget how important it is to be careful with the rabbits and he will end up killing them. Here is where the author conveys the fact that Lennie destroys everything important when he touches it: “’Why do you got to get killed? You ain’t so…show more content…
Lennie hopes of owning rabbits, but readers know that this is impossible because Lennie doesn’t know his own strength and goes weak for soft things. Crooks hopes that people would stop treating him different due to the color of his skin. Poor Candy just wants someone to keep him as an employee so he doesn’t die in the world lonely. All of these characters show this form of irony in their own way. Each of these characters holds these dreams close but as readers go throughout the story they see that the characters dreams are nothing more than far-fetched
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