Symbolism essays on Of Mice and Men are a staple assignment, and for good reason: the novella is unusually dense with recurring symbols for its short length. The rabbits, Candy's dog, the Salinas River setting, and Lennie's mouse all offer rich material, but they also invite a common weakness in student writing, simply identifying a symbol without interpreting what it means.

A rubric built for this assignment needs to explicitly separate identification from interpretation as two distinct skills, since many students can correctly name a symbol without being able to explain its function or connect it to the novella's broader argument.

The strongest essays trace a symbol across multiple appearances rather than analyzing a single instance in isolation. Candy's dog, for example, only fully makes sense as symbolic foreshadowing when a student connects its death early in the novella to the ending, rather than treating the scene as a standalone moment.

It also helps to require students to explain why Steinbeck chose that particular symbol rather than another, pushing them toward craft-level reasoning about authorial choice instead of treating symbols as facts to be reported.

Building the Rubric Around Interpretation

Rather than a single line for "identifies symbolism," break the criterion into stages that mirror the actual thinking required: naming the symbol, tracing its appearances, and interpreting its significance to the novella's themes or ending.

• Accurately identifies a symbol with specific textual references
• Traces the symbol across more than one appearance in the text
• Interprets what the symbol represents rather than only describing it
• Connects the symbol's meaning to a broader theme, such as vulnerability or fate
• Explains why this particular symbol fits Steinbeck's setting and characters

Common Symbols and What Weak Essays Miss

The mouse Lennie carries in the opening chapter is often correctly identified as foreshadowing, but weaker essays stop there without explaining what specifically it foreshadows or how the pattern repeats with increasingly significant consequences throughout the novella.

Similarly, the Salinas River setting bookends the novella, and essays that notice this structural symmetry but fail to explain its emotional or thematic effect are only doing half the analytical work the assignment requires.

Encouraging Original Symbol Choices

Beyond the most commonly discussed symbols, sharper student essays sometimes notice less obvious patterns, such as the recurring motif of hands throughout the novella or the significance of specific character names. Rubric language that leaves room for originality, rather than requiring one of a fixed list of symbols, rewards this kind of independent close reading.

This approach also makes grading more engaging for the teacher, since it avoids reading the same three symbols analyzed in nearly identical terms across every essay in the stack.

Feedback That Builds Symbolic Reading Skills

Because symbolic reading is a skill students will need throughout their literary education, feedback on this assignment should explicitly name what strong symbolic interpretation looks like, not just point out where a given essay fell short.

A comment like "you named the symbol clearly, now push further into why Steinbeck placed it here specifically" gives students a concrete next step they can apply to the next text they analyze, well beyond this single novella.