Crooks:
As Crooks says when he hears of Lennie’s dream to own his own farm, “Nobody ever gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land.”
George and Lennie’s dream of owning a farm, which would enable them to sustain themselves, and, most important, offer them protection from an inhospitable world, represents a typically American ideal.
The Futility of the American Dream (*In the context of the novel!!):
Their journey, which awakens George to the impossibility of this dream, sadly proves that the bitter Crooks is right: such paradises of freedom, contentment, and safety are not to be found in this* world. George and LEnnies dream:
The farm that George constantly describes to Lennie—those few acres of land on which they will grow their own food and tend their own livestock—is one of the most powerful symbols in the book. It seduces not only the other characters but also the reader, who, like the men, wants to believe in the possibility of the free, idyllic life it promises. Candy is immediately drawn in by the dream, and even the cynical Crooks hopes that Lennie and George will let him live there too. A paradise for men who want to be masters of their own lives, the farm represents the possibility of freedom, self-reliance, and protection from the cruelties of the world.
George and Lennie's desire to have a piece of property that is all their own and to "live off the fatta the lan'" is a recurring motif in the story (13). They build their dream up to such an extent that even if they managed to "roll up a stake" and buy a piece of land, their lives there would likely have never lived up to the ideal they envisioned in their heads (47). In fact, George admits that their dream was destined to fail: "I think I knowed from the very first. I think I knowed we'd never do her" (90). He remarks, because Lennie "[...] usta like to hear about it so much I got to thinking