Of Mice And Men Symbolism Analysis

A literary work can only be received through symbols, through concepts - for that is what words are…” This is said by Andrei Tarkovsky who is a famous Soviet and Russian film maker. The symbolism in John Steinbeck's book Of Mice and Men is an excellent example of the words that Andrei talked about. Of Mice and Men has symbolism so small that is you don’t look close enough you might miss it. This book is placed in the mid 1930s in California when there were migrant workers. The migrant workers, and the main focus of the book, George and Lennie got run out of the town Weeds and now working on a farm. The writing style John Steinbeck shows is very discrete in this book. Mice and Men has animals as symbolic which most people pay attention to, but what if there was another symbolic item. The setting has that symbolism George and Lennie’s dream that everyone wants, the dull bunkhouse is where the workers try to get comfortable in an unknown place with little supplies, and the harness room that Crooks lives in that are the constraints of society. Everyone has a dream that keeps us going and that goes for the characters George and Lennie too. We all have a “‘Tell me - like you done before.”(13). …show more content…
Crooks is an African American man who lives in the harness room on the ranch. The harnesses symbolize the social constraints that Crooks faces daily. The harnesses room “. . .has pegs on which hung broken harnesses in the process of being mended; straps of new leather…”(66) The broken harnesses were also on the wall by the window. The harness room is symbolizing the constraints that Crooks faces, the broken harnesses symbolize the ways Crooks tried to break society's rule over him by playing with the white kids and the broken harnesses on the wall of the window is saying to Crooks is that you may had broken the constraints of society but this is something you can never have