I find it hard to believe that these bindle stiffs have much part in any so-called American Dream. I get a little tired of seeing these buzz words appearing over and over again in essays. They are space-fillers, cliches. They remind me of the word "Everyman." If a writer can't think of anything else to say, he will say that George Milton is Everyman. These men for the most part don't have any American Dream. They are just trying to stay alive. When they get together and talk, they talk about sports, current events, past experiences--never about any American Dream. George and Lennie may be exceptions. They would like to own their own little farm. That is no impossibility except for the fact that Lennie is a disaster waiting to happen. If George and Lennie had both been normal men, albeit uneducated and not especially intelligent, they could have bought a little place for less than a thousand dollars and lived there, as a lot of other people were doing during the Depression years. There would have been nothing especially dreamlike about such a life, but they might not have had to work quite so hard. Without a woman, their housekeeping would have been primitive and their food would have been pretty basic and unsavory. Having a cow does not solve a lot of problems. Subsistence farms only provide subsistence, meaning not much besides food, and food was very cheap in California in the Depression era. What could they have done in their spare time except to play checkers? Of Mice and Men is more about the exploitation of the working man than about the hopes of working men to become land owners. I agree with post #6.

As a Socialist, John Steinbeck perceives the failure of Capitalism as responsible for the eradication of the American Dream for the masses, those itinerant workers and others involved in menial occupations.  It is only through a unity, a fraternity of men that the dream of ownership and advancement can occur as exemplfied by the possibility of owning a farm when Candy joins George and Lennie and, then, even Crooks is considered as a partner.

The American Dream is somewhat hypocritical.  It does not really apply to everyone.  Take Lennie for example.  George attempts to involve him in the dream by telling him they will have a rabbit farm, but there is no way Lennie could achieve it on his own.  The American Dream is really about independence.  It is about owning a house, having a job, and living your life your own way.  This is George and Lennie’s goal, but it is not something they can accomplish realistically as simple, poor, migrant farm hands. 

Though I do think there are plenty of reasons to connect Of Mice and Mento the notion of the American Dream, I don't automatically like to read this book as a comment on the impossibility of the American Dream. 

Crooks, Candy and Curley's wife are the most thoroughly disenfranchised...