Everyone dreams; but why bother dreaming, when dreams are made to be shattered? For some people, dreams are the only things they have left, their only purpose in life. In John Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men, he portrays the idea of shattered dreams through the character's experiences showing us that no matter how much we are willing to sacrifice to make dreams come true, sometimes they just simply do not come true.

From the beginning, Lennie and George had the American dream. "We'll have a big vegetable patch and a rabbit hutch and chickens. And when it rains in the winter, we'll just say hell with goin' to work, and we'll build up a fire in the stove and set around it an' listen to the rain comin' down on the roof..." (15) Lennie and George were two farmers with no family, no place to live...