Acosta 1Lorraine AcostaILS209020 October 2019Life, Work Ethic, and Goals in Of Mice and Men by John SteinbeckFor my interdisciplinary research paper, I intend to focus on the perception of work and goals, as well as what it takes to achieve them, in the short book Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I first read this book for the first time as a sophomore in high school and have read it a number of times since then; I guess you can say it’s, for sure, one of my favorites. In this novel,the characters are portrayed as not hard-working enough to reach long-term goals they have set for themselves and this is shown several times throughout the story. This begins with two of the main characters, George and Lennie, who want to buy their own farm and, to do this, they need money. The problem with this is that they spend all the money they earn on beer and women and,basically, show no effort to make progress on this dream of theirs. Another character, Curley’s wife, had dreams of becoming an actress, but didn’t because she ended up marrying Curley. To many, this may not seem like a reason to give up on one’s dreams; it may seem like an excuse, even, to not work hard for them. Today, people have dreams and aspirations, of course, however, most tend to give up on them or don’t have enough work ethic to achieve those goals. On the other hand, life often “gets in the way” of our goals. Like Curley’s wife, it could be family responsibilities that prevent an individual from “going for it;” in other cases, it may be a lack of education and a lack of money to get it. Ultimately, many people just lack work ethic; they simply expect good things to happen without them actually putting the work in. I plan to explore this area to try to pin down anyAcosta 2social, emotional, or psychological factors that may play important roles in people’s work ethic and