The Rabbit Dream
Throughout the novel, John Steinbeck makes avid use of the rabbit dream. Through its use, each character is shown to have greater depth than the reader may have suspected, enabling the audience to see how lonely and disappointed the character’s lives are through the humble ambitions that they possess. The dream has grown from a fantasy of George and Lennies, to making an impression on both Candy and Crook’s lives as well.
As George and Lennie travel around they tell each other their dream as a way of coping with the loneliness of being migrant workers in America in the 1930s. Unlike most men in their position, they have something to look forward to and something to share. At the beginning of the novel, it seems that George and Lennie's dream is just a fantasy that will never come true, but when they meet Candy things change. Candy has almost enough money to buy a small farm. If George and Lennie save their money and don't get 'canned' it seems that the three of them would be able to achieve their dream. This dream also affects Crooks, the stable buck. Lennie shares his dream with him and for a moment even Crooks has a vision of a better life.
Candy doesn't have much hope at the start of the story, but when he meets Lennie and George and finds out what they are planning, he suddenly sees how his future could be different. Candy is most worried about being useless, and once he is canned he will have “no place to go, an’[will not be able to] get no more jobs.” If this happens, he will have nowhere to go and no one to care about him. When he hears George and Lennie's dream he sees a future in which he will own a farm and be forever safe from being canned. He is willing to put up his compensation money to achieve his dream and have the future pleasure of planning what he will do at his own place.
The rabbit dream seems to hold the entire novel together. The reader is first introduced to it at the beginning, when it sounds...