Steinbeck describes people and places very well, so we can clearly picture them in our mind’s eye. Especially in Section 1 of the book, Steinbeck takes a lot of time describing the brush and its surroundings; “On one side of the river the golden foothill slopes curve up to the strong and rocky Gabilan mountains, but on the valley side the water is lined with trees.” Steinbeck also describes every character in a lot of depth, particularly George and Lennie, the two main characters. Although the ranch isn’t described in quite as much detail, you still get a good idea of what is must have been like: not very pleasant. The bunkhouse is described as very plain and very drab; “Inside the walls were white-washed and the floor unpainted. In three walls there were small, square windows, and, in the fourth, a solid door with a wooden latch.” It couldn’t have been a very nice place to live, but during the Great Depression men had to get work wherever they could to earn enough money to support themselves and their families.
The language used shows us a lot about the characters as well as the place in which they’re living. The reader can tell that they’re all quite uneducated and this is shown in the dialect and in the way they speak. They way Steinbeck writes the dialect also helps us hear the speech in our head instead of just trying to guess at how they spoke. This makes us feel like we’re actually there, in the ranch with them, instead of just reading it out of a book. The ranch workers use a lot of slang terms such as ‘swamper’ for cleaner, ‘stake’ instead of money, ‘purty’ in place of pretty and ‘tenement’ instead of tournament.
The lives of the workers follows an unchanging routine. Every morning they would get up at the crack of dawn to start their work which included bucking barley and grain, mule driving, cleaning and looking after the horses. After their strenuous day’s work, they would eat their unsatisfactory supper, which was poor because of the expense of food, and in the evening they might play a match of horseshoes or a hand of cards or simply talk to one another. They would all look forward to the end of the month when they would receive their fifty dollars which they would spend mostly in ‘cat-houses’ or brothels.
Most of the workers got on very well with each other, but, as in most communities, they were exceptions. Crooks, the black stable hand, was prejudiced against just because he was black. If that happened today, the victim would probably be able to sue the abuser but back in the 1930s racism was much more widely accepted and everybody, even Crooks, took it as a daily part of life. Another person who wasn’t entirely accepted was Lennie, but only by Curley. Curley, another main character, would bully and taunt Lennie merely because Lennie was bigger than him and Curley had a grudge against big men. If Curley ever got into a fight with a big man and lost, Curley wouldn’t look bad because the bigger in a fight is always expected to win anyway. But if Curley won the fight then he would be regarded as a champion to be strong enough to defeat someone tougher and bigger than him. Either way, Curley couldn’t lose, which was the reason he was the last of the workers not to be very well liked. Many of the men were a bit afraid of Curley, as he was aggressive and hot tempered, but none of them could stand up to him because he was the boss’s son and had a secured place at the ranch. If anyone tried to override him they’d be the ones losing their jobs, not Curley.
Curley’s wife was not well liked by the men. They see her as ‘jail-bate’ and a ‘tart’, and certainly she seems to enjoy flirting with the workers. They do nothing to discourage her, but they most certainly don’t respect her. Throughout the book her real name is not mentioned. She is just known as ‘Curley’s wife’. This could be representing that the men at the ranch don’t see her as an actual person, just and item, or, in Curley’s case, a possession. Curley is very possessive towards her; he thoroughly dislikes her talking to the other men and doesn’t even like her to leave their house next to the ranch. This lack of freedom could be the reason she strove for attention so much. She probably felt like Curley didn’t treat her very well, and she could be right. She’s definitely quite a sad character, even though she comes across as flirty and seductive as well. But later, when she’s talking to Lennie, her other side begins to show through. She starts telling Lennie about her life before she married Curley and how many times she’d been let down; by her mother, by her old boyfriends and now by Curley. Her character seems to change completely from a bubbly, flirty woman to a sad, confused girl. At the beginning of the book Steinbeck definitely sees her through male eyes, not as a person just an object, but as the book progresses she’s seen from a more sensitive, female perspective, as Steinbeck studies her personality and emotions and what she really feels like.
A typical ranch worker would probably be George. He has the same idealisms and dreams as many men at that time. Dreams of having his own land and being self-sustaining, and dreams of not having to work under somebody else ever again. But in his heart of hearts he probably knew all along that his dreams would probably not become reality.
In the short-term, too, his interests were the same as many other ranch workers. He enjoyed going to brothels and out to the pub and playing cards and horseshoes. The only thing that makes him stand out from a typical worker is that he travelled round with Lennie. Most of the men just looked after themselves, and when they moved on they moved on by their self. But George and Lennie were a pair and always travelled from place to place together. George’s personality is also perhaps slightly deeper than somebody like Carlson’s. George looked after Lennie after Lennie’s Aunt Clara dies, but many men would have just left Lennie and gone on to find work for themselves, not being able to cope with Lennie’s childlike mind.
In conclusion, life during the Great Depression would have been very hard. Work would have been difficult to find, and even if you were lucky enough to find work at a ranch life would still have been difficult, with a poor salary. Steinbeck portrays George and Lennie’s world very well, including all the key factors to how life was then. The personalities and emotions of the ranchers are shown well and with sensitivity, especially George’s feelings towards Lennie. The story seems very real because of how accurately the places are described and how real the characters’ personalities are and, of course, because the story is based strongly on fact and reflects many lives of ranch workers at that time.
