The Environment

The environment is described very thoroughly whenever the main characters, George and Lennie, reach a new location. For example, the whole first page and half of second only described the environment. And when they reach the ranch they were looking for, almost a whole page was used to describe the bunk-house. After that thorough description, you get almost none.  Doing this makes it quite easy to forget what the environment actually looked like, since you get almost no reminder.

The first place George and Lennie visit is the water pool. The description of the place gives a very calm feeling.

A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool. 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—willows fresh and green with every spring, carrying in their lower leaf junctures the debris of the winter’s flooding; and sycamores with mottled, white, recumbent limbs and branches that arch over the pool.(Of mice and men, 1937, Steinbeck, John, p.2)

You can really paint a picture of this beautiful landscape in your mind. The mood of the place is quite bright, even though the sun is setting over the hills.

The second place the two men reach, the bunk-house, is much more neutral. I don´t know why, but I don´t get any specific feelings about this place. It´s just like any old “barrack” typed house. Maybe that is the feeling the author wants to give this place: no feeling at all. The mood of the place is at least not as bright, playful and calm as the earlier scene.

The bunk house was a long, rectangular building. Inside, the walls were whitewashed and the floor unpainted. In three walls there were small, square windows, and in the fourth, a solid door with a wooden latch. Against the walls were eight bunks, five of them made up with blankets and the other three showing their burlap ticking. Over each bunk there was nailed an apple box with the opening forward so that it made two shelves for the personal belongings of the occupant of the bunk. And these shelves were loaded with little articles, soap and talcum powder, razors and those Western magazines ranch men love to read and scoff at and secretly believe. And there were medicines on the shelves, and little vials, combs; and from nails on the box sides, a few neckties. Near one wall there was a black cast-iron stove, its stovepipe going straight up through the ceiling. In the middle of the room stood a big square table littered with playing cards, and around it were grouped boxes for the players to sit on. (Of mice and men, 1937, Steinbeck, John, p.15)

Even though George and Lennie comes to this sometimes beautiful places, the never seem to be really at home. At least that’s the feeling I get. Maybe it´s because they´ve been on the move so much during their life, they´ve worked up an habit never to making themselves at home, since they will probably be on the move again within a short period of time. It seems as if neither of them will ever feel at home until they´ve come up with enough money to buy their dream house George so often talks about. Maybe hen they will finally have a home.