The Great Depression of the 1930's was a tumultuous time. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes and means of employment. Whole families would roam America, desperate for food and a place to rest, struggling to survive. There were many men who tramped across America alone, searching for menial jobs to keep them alive another month. John Steinbeck's “Of Mice and Men” gives an insight into the lives of such migrants, showing how constantly being on the road leads men into living a rootless and insecure life. Steinbeck illustrates how life on the road along with the violent environment of a bunkhouse dehumanises and will inevitably lead a man to the search for escape.
Indeed, it is the violent environment of the bunkhouse that is juxtaposed with the first idyllic environment with which the novel opens and closes. The setting of the first environment is one of deep tranquillity and harmony. For example, the water is described by the narrative voice as “twinkling” and “warm” and the way in which it “slips over the yellow sands,” with sibilance, immediately gives a sense of calm and peace. The willows that are “fresh and green”, the “golden foothills”, “yellow sands” and the “twinkling” of the river sugar a play before the eye of green, gold, light, innocence and glory. These images enhance the sense of youth, purity, cleansing and renewal of the Salinas River, almost giving us the impression that this environment is sacramental. Steinbeck intends for us to see this setting initially as one of innocent nature. As in the story of creation in Genesis, everything is in harmonious order and the river brings new life. The use of alliteration in the description of the river when its “water” is described as “warm” is a sound of harmony. It is a place of refuge and is full of animals such as the “rabbits” that “sit on the sand in the evening,” the “’coons” that have made “tracks” on the “damp-flats” during the night and the deer that have made “split-wedge tracks” on the ground. The lizard that “makes a great skittering” creates a scene of great tranquillity, as does the sense of silence, which is so extreme that we can hear that “skittering” is onomatopoeic.
In contrast to this environment, the bunkhouse is a setting to loneliness, violence, racism and deprivation both emotional and physical in the sense of lack of possessions. Steinbeck indeed sets the bunkhouse near “Soledad” which is Spanish for loneliness, as a narrative ploy to highlight a key aspect of the environment. In the bunkhouse itself, the men are forced to share a room with workers they do not know and are on the move so often that they never have the time to form stable relationships. In order to form a relationship one needs time, and for intimacy to grow, one also needs privacy. The men do not have this and consequently build up walls to protect what concerns them. An example of raising such walls is the warning that Candy gives to George and Lennie that, “A guy on a ranch don’t never listen nor he don’t ast no questions.” This type of destructive attitude is brought about by the lack of trust that exists in the bunkhouse, which also gives rise to vulnerability, hindering the formation of relationships furthermore. It is also vital to have recreational activity in order to establish a relationship. In the bunkhouse, the men have little possibility for constructive recreation. One of the few games we see them engage themselves in is cards which they play tediously and aimlessly. It is the lack of entertainment makes the men susceptible to brothels, drink and fighting. These are some of the chief ways in which the men show themselves to be shaped by the environment. We immediately become aware of such habits as soon as we meet Candy who describes Christmas and the way in which the men drank “a whole gallon of whiskey” and “took after the nigger”. This not only demonstrates the drinking habits of the men but also the way in which they resort to violence as a form of entertainment. Here, the “nigger” being referred to is the stable buck, Crooks. He is the object of violence due to the racism that was present in America during the thirties. It is therefore evident that the harsh conditions of the bunkhouse give rise to the shaping of the characters.
