1. Hardship and the American Dream
How it links to literature.

2. American dream
Is defined as the ideal by which equality of opportunity is available to any American allowing the highest aspirations and goals to be achieved.
Hardship ties into the dream as to achieve the American dream you must be prepared to work hard and suffer for it.

3. Hardship(history)
The concept of hardship can be found deeply engrained within the American dream.
Can be traced as far back as the first colonists settled in America and survived some of the toughest conditions known to man with the hope of making a better life for themselves.
Though the actual term American dream wasn’t used until the 1920s a time of great economic growth and prosperity.
However the true legacy of the American dream would be put to the test during the great depression of the 1930s where both Steinbeck and Harper Lee set their stories.

4. Hardship/American Dream during the 1930s
This was the time in which the concept of the dream was at its most debatable.
People for the most part suffered for very little or even no reward for their hard work.
A time in which it appeared that no one was doing well whether you were a farmer or a banker.
The former promised land of America in which colonists worked so hard just to reach seemed as far away as ever.
As regular people struggled this brought them into contact from people of all walks of life for better and for worse
It is this coming together of people that Harper Lee and John Steinbeck latch on in their novels.

5. Links to literature
Hardship is a prominent theme in both To Kill A Mockingbird and Of Mice And Men.
In Mockingbird the effect of the depression in Maycomb Alabama creates hysteria and anger between blacks and whites who have both been hit hard.
The problems of both black and white poverty are brought out into the open with the trial scene.
Whereas in Of Mice And Men the depression brings all the characters of the book together and in some ways forces the different groups of people who would have otherwise never have socialised to coexist with one another.
However as the ending tells us this doesn’t work out.

6. Conclusion
To summarise hardship is deeply engrained within the American dream.
It is the one feature that works to solely unite the characters of both to To Kill A Mockingbird and Of Mice And Men.