In the book “Of Mice and Men” the author Steinbeck provides us with symbolic objects, ideas, and even people are symbolic in this book that has a genre of a novella. Through the book the author gives us symbolic ideas of dreams and the separation between different types of people which give the idea or symbol of segregation. This idea of segregation is a part of a process that the characters in the book have to go through in order to achieve their freedom. The author does not throw these symbols right at your face, but he uses objects and clues to let the reader know that there is a symbol behind all the ideas that he puts together. He also likes to give the reader ideas that can not be understood with the knowledge obtained so far on the book, instead you have to keep reading in order to understand what the author is trying to tell us.

      Steinbeck is telling us the readers that in order to be successful and be able to achieve the freedom that everyone wants, people in this society have to go through some type of labor or some type of duty so you can be able to achieve the freedom you work for. “Dream” in this novel would be a sub symbol for this symbol of freedom by putting up with segregation and the labor that all these hard working men go through. People in this novel like George and Lenny have dreams of not putting up with hard labor and people that are strictly bossy like Curley, the dream that George and Lenny have is to go live in a place were they don’t have to worry about working for anyone else and in their own place they could call home.

      Segregation plays an important part in this novel because it shows how people are separated by society. One example of segregation in the novel is the way Crooks lives in the ranch. He has poor living conditions like his room and the location were his room is located, next to piles of animal waste which it could represent that the negro gets the worst spot in the ranch because of his skin color. All the other guys live together in an area which is not that great but is way better than the place Crooks lives in. These people that don’t live in Crook’s condition are more likely to go on and pursue their dreams because they have their mentality that they are not going to stay there for long because they don’t seem as settled as Crooks is in his little room that he lives on. Crooks might be settled to the fullest because he probably thinks that he cannot get any better any were else the way society is against African Americans.

      Freedom also plays an important part in the novel because that’s what mostly all of the characters from this novel seem to want. Dream plays as a motif for the symbol of freedom, dreams are placed in this novel so we can see what characters would want to be free one day by expressing how they really want to be when they get out of the ranch. Lenny and George have a dream about leaving the ranch and have their own house am grow their own food and take care or their house because its going to be omething that they are going to own so they have to take of it really well because that what they have been working for this whole time. Candy wants to be part of their dream as well because he has been in the ranch for a really long time and he wants to get out of there before its too late. The ranch represents how the individuals inside are not free and the outside of the farm is were all the freedom is located, the ranch plays like a barrier from freedom by keeping all the individuals working and working. Lenny, George, Candy, And Curley’s wife all have a dream and that dream is not inside the farm, but its to go out of the ranch and make something out of their lives and that means to be free and not at the ranch were they are going to keep doing the same thing over and over again and not go any were in life.

       Over all in the novel "Of Mice and Men" the author provides us with with many symbolic ideas and people which could represent the segregation and freedom this country provides for the people. The novel shows these symbols not in a way that the reader has to figure them out by the objects and future references from the book. The author does not tell us about the symbols but he makes us find out who and what are symbols and that makes this book interesting.