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Of Mice and Men Visions of America Quotes Page 1
Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph) Though Steinbeck did not originally include chapter numbers with the text, most editions are broken into six sections, based on day and time of day: Thursday evening = Chapter 1; Friday day = Chapter 2; Friday evening = Chapter 3; Saturday night = Chapter 4; Sunday afternoon = Chapter 5; Sunday evening = Chapter 6.
| Quote #1 There is a path through the willows and among the sycamores, a path beaten hard by boys coming down from the ranches to swim in the deep pool, and beaten hard by tramps who come wearily down from the highway in the evening to jungle-up near water. (1.2) |
The divide we see here is between working ranch boys and "tramps." Though tramps (traveling workers) are ostensibly coming along to get work, there’s still a gap in the social status between these two kinds of men: the working and the non-working. The difference is important in the America of the Depression, where money could make (and more often break) a man.
| Quote #2 GEORGE "Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don’t belong no place. They come to a ranch an’ work up a stake and then they go inta town and blow their stake, and the first thing you know they’re poundin’ their tail on some other ranch. They ain’t got nothing to look ahead to." (1.113) |
This sounds like the America Steinbeck discovered in his travels around the working camps of northern California. The men he met were Depression-era archetypes, working hard to make a living and having little to call their own.
| Quote #3 GEORGE "For two bits I’d shove out of here. If we can get jus’ a few dollars in the poke we’ll shove off and go up the American River and pan gold. We can make maybe a couple of dollars a day there, and we might hit a pocket." (2.166) |
George seems particularly prone to that American "get up and go." To him, it seems there are opportunities everywhere (to get a new job, to get a little piece of land). But there are practical limitations on his possibilities (and his dreams) that are uniquely American too, such as the Great Depression. It’s another problem of living as a transient in a land supposedly full of opportunity.
