1. LO: What are dreams and why might they be important
LO: What are dreams and why might they be important? What are our first impressions of the characters?
What do the book covers reveal about the plot?

2. What can you remember about these characters?
Curley
Carlson
Lennie
George
Slim
Candy
Curley’s wife

3. How would you sum up what a ‘dream’ is?

4. Do dreams often come true?

5. What is this?
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley,   An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promised joy.
What does it mean?

6. Let’s annotate – how does this link to Of Mice and Men?
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley,   An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promised joy.
Translation!
The made plans of mice and men Often go wrong,   And leave us nothing but grief and pain, For promised joy.

7. This is one of the central themes of the novel.
The American Dream
From the 17th Century, when the first settlers arrived, immigrants dreamed of a better life in America. Many were escaping poverty and wanted to make their fortune somehow.
The American Dream was the idea that people could achieve whatever they wanted through hard work, regardless of class.
America was known as ‘the land of the free’ or ‘the land of opportunity’.
These ideals clashed with the great depression. Think credit crunch…but a lot worse!
This is one of the central themes of the novel.

8. What are the dreams of these characters?
Candy
Lennie
George
Curley’s wife

9. George and Lennie’s Dream
“Ok. Some day – we’re gonna get the jack together and we’re gonna have a little house and a couple of acres and a cow and some pigs and…”
“An’ live off the fatta the land,” Lennie shouted. “An’ have rabbits. Go on, George! Tell about what we’re gonna have in the garden and about the rabbits in the cages and about the rain in the winter and the stove, and how thick the cream is on the milk like you hardly cut it. Tell about that, George.”
“Well,” said George. “We’ll have a big vegetable patch and a rabbit hutch and chickens. And when it rains in the winter, we’ll just say that hell with going to work, and we’ll build the fire in the stove and set around it and listen to the rain coming down on the roof.”

10. These characters would view their dream in different ways.
Which parts of the dream would each character care about most? WHY?
George
Lennie