Steinbeck wanted his characters to be brutal and fail to achieve their goals they worked so hard to get. He wanted the characters to have foul mouths and have bleak views of what life really is. As said from the genre paper of naturalism "Characters in naturalistic literature are trapped by their heredity and environment and end in failure." Dealing with vast emotions and massive challenges, characters like George and Lennie in the novel, ended in failure because of their brutal surroundings. If Curly 's wife never intervened with Lennie after he killed the young pup, then she would not have ever died. Lennie was only driven by his basic urge to touch soft things. " Lennie 's big fingers fell to stroking her hair. "Don 't you mess it up," she said.""( Steinbeck 91 ). Steinbeck really placed the characters with brutal settings among brutal characters.
The setting of the book is highly realistic and greatly portrays what the time period truly represented. Steinbeck, once a migrant worker too, lived the experience of his literature. He knew exactly what the environment should be like too and what it shouldn 't. "Chapters one and six take place by the river, two and three in the bunkhouse, four and five in the barn." All of these setting are