Steinbeck wrote Of Mice and Men in order to show the pain and miseries of dreams that the farm labourers went through. The novel was written to show through past experiences that dreams are stepping stones to fulfilling an aspiration and as sometimes dreams are just a form of encouragement unlikely to come true. Furthermore, all characters represent some form of experiences that people went through. For example, Crooks represents the black people, Curley's wife represents the typical female in the times, and Curley represents those men that because of wealth had power but otherwise were just cold hearted useless men. Hope this helps.