An old, lame dog struggles to follow Candy into the bunkhouse. The dog merely appears to accompany Candy, easily being forgotten among Steinbeck’s far more intriguing narrative. However, this initially uninteresting dog does serve a purpose. In his story Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck constantly uses animals and animal imagery to suggest larger ideas, further developing characters. Steinbeck uses Candy’s dog to support his statements about power and moral responsibility by associating the dog to other characters, making his themes more evident. Steinbeck models Candy’s dog to appear similar to Candy so he can use the dog’s death as a parallel to how farms expel migrant workers who are too feeble to work. The audience first learns about