Setting
The book is set in the late 1930's mainly on a ranch. With every setting comes a detailed explantion about it such as "A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drips in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. (Pg. 1) and going even deeper than that to give you a better picture of the setting. The setting shifts four times from a small resting place, to the bunkhouse, to Crooks bunk, the barnhouse, and finally back to the place where Lennie and George are first introduced. The mood of the book mostly follows a storyline of conflict. First with George yelling at Lennie, then Curley picking on Lennie, to Candy asking everyone else to not kill his dog, then to a fight between Lennie and Curley and finally George's own internal struggle on what to do about Lennie.
Point of View
The point of view is 3rd person limiited following George and Lennie's feeling and life. We see the world through the eyes of these two men although we do get more of the story from George than from Lennie.
Conflict
In this book there is a conflict in every chapter. Almost every conflict which arises is a man vs. man conflict. We have George shouting at Lennie, Curley picking on and fighting Lennie, and Candy and Carlson argueing about Candy's dog. Despite this the biggest and most important conflicts are the internal ones like the George has with himself on how to deal with Lennie or Curley's wife and her lonliness or every man's lonliness. Most of the problems are resolved by one person winning or a compromise being made. George always calms down enough to not be mad at Lennie, Curley gets Lennie killed and Carlson shoots Candy's dog. Not all the resolutions of conflicts are happy but they are what the men believed to be nessacary. There are some problems which we don't see get resolved such as the men being lonely or what happens to George now.
Language
Steinbeck wrote his book in a manner that is casual and gets the point across. His book is very realistic while one would like to belive that nothing like this ever happened it is very possible that it did. Steinbeck uses irony once in this book when you see George and Lennie maybe finally getting to live their dream but then later on it is crushed by Lennie killing Curley's wife and George killing Lennie.Steinbeck usees a lot of foreshadowing espically in chapter three. Conflict arises between Lennie and Curley which later escaltes into Lennie breaking Curley's hand. He also has Carlson explain how to put down an animal without it feeling anything which is the same technique George uses when he kills Lennie later on. He also uses foreshadowing earlier on in the book when Lennie mentions accidentally killing mice because he doesn't know his own strength. This foreshadows to later on when Lennie accidentally kills the pup and Curleys wife. Steinbeck also uses strong imagery by always describing his setting in a very elaborate way. He paints a clear picture of where a certain scene is set.