Chapter One began with a beautiful nature scene: the gentle breeze, the slopes of the mountains, the evening sun going down, and the calm pool. Chapter Two introduces the ranch. The bunkhouse is sparsely furnished; it's a dark room with just the essentials of a bunk and place to put gear. Once the story shifts from the natural setting of Chapter One to the bunkhouse in Chapter Two, things change considerably. Steinbeck contrasts the world of nature and the world of men. At the pond the water is warm, the breeze gentle, and the light shimmers over the sand. No wonder George wants to spend the night there instead of coming straight to the ranch. In contrast, the ranch contains characters who have been beaten down by life; it also contains danger in the form of Curley and his wife. By juxtaposing the natural scene at the pond with the scene in the bunkhouse, Steinbeck highlights the contrast between the freedom of nature and the unpredictable pattern of humans and their sometimes dangerous ways.
The atmosphere of the bunkhouse can be determined by the people George and Lennie meet there. Through the appearance of various characters, George and Lennie get a feeling for "the lay of the land." These characters represent various parts of American society during the Depression, and they also speak of some of the sadness of that time: loneliness, rootlessness, and poverty. Candy and Crooks, in particular, are characters separated from the others, Candy by old age and his handicap of only one hand, and Crooks because of his race. Yet when Candy reveals that the last guy (the one who had George's bunk) left because it was time to move on, we see the loneliness that plagues all the men who, like George and Lennie, move from place to place to find work. In this way, Steinbeck describes the general situation of the migrant hands; they work somewhere for a short time and move on to some other equally lonely place.
