John Steinbeck's California-area farming upbringing shines through vibrantly in the settings and plots of most of his works. Steinbeck's novel, Of Mice and Men, is set in the Salinas Valley of California. The story centers on two itinerant farm workers, George Milton and Lennie Small, with dreams of one day owning a home of their own. Lennie Small is a shapeless, simple-minded, slow-moving, light-eyed wreck whose enormous physical strength often gets him into trouble. George Milton on the other hand is small in stature, intelligent, dark in face and eyes, and acts as Lennie's guardian and calming force. At the beginning of the story the prospect of realizing their dream seems remote, but as the plot unfolds (they meet a crippled dormitory worker who wants to join the project with them and who offers to contribute with the savings of a life), the probability of achievement increases. If the three of them pool their salaries at the end of the current month, they can quit and move to their farm. Lennie manages to avoid disaster by exactly three days. He gets involved with the flirtatious wife of Curley, the boss' violent son. Through a series of unfortunate events, he gets scared and inadvertently kills the girl. Curley organizes a group to arrest Lennie. George gets to Lennie first and, out of sympathy for his companion, shoots him in the head to spare him the pain of Curley's rifle or the misery of incarceration. Lennie's killing of the mice and later killing of the puppy creates a pattern that the reader expects to be followed. George's story about Lennie and the little girl in the red dress, which he tells twice, adds to this expectation, as does the filming of Candy's d... medium of paper... typical Steinbeck novel in terms of simplicity, plot and setting. Steinbeck transplants the knowledge he acquired and the images he conceived of California into his writings. Works cited and consulted: Bloom, Harold. John Steinbeck. Pennsylvania: Chelsea House Publishers, 1999.Davis, Robert Murray. Steinbeck: A Collection of Critical Essays. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1972. Fontenrose, Joseph. John Steinbeck: An Introduction and Interpretation. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1964. French, Warren. John Steinbeck's Fiction Revisited. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994.Lisca, Peter. The Wide World of John Steinbeck. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1958. Steinbeck, John. Of mice and men. New York: Penguin Books USA Incorporated, 1978. Tedlock, E. W. Steinbeck and His Critics. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957.