Describe the setting of Of Mice and Men - time, place, and circumstance. Use quotations for support.

The first page of the novel describes the peaceful area, south of Soledad (California), where the Salinas River forms a small pool. The scene is as tranquil as can be until George and Lennie make their way to the pool. 

And then from the direction of the state highway came the sound of footsteps on crisp sycamore leaves. The rabbits hurried noiselessly for cover. A stilted heron labored up into the air and pounded down river. For a moment the place was lifeless, and then two men emerged from the path and came into the opening by the green pool. 

George tells Lennie to return to this peaceful setting if and when he gets into trouble. So, it is a safe haven. However, note the subtle way Steinbeck indicates how the two men (Lennie in particular) innocently disrupt the tranquility at the beginning of the story. This foreshadows the possibility that Lennie might innocently disrupt something later on. 

Crooks' room is significant for how humble and simple it is. In a novel about outcasts (Lennie, Candy, and Curley's wife in particular) Crooks stands out as an outcast who is part of the ranch life but segregated. His room is not in the bunk house. He lives separate from the other workers: 

Crooks’ bunk was a long box filled with straw, on which his blankets were flung. On the wall by the window there were pegs on which hung broken harness in process of being mended; strips of new leather; and under the window itself a little bench for leather-working tools, curved knives and needles and balls of linen thread, and a small hand riveter. 

Crooks basically lives in a tool shed. The bunk house is not much better. These settings show the rugged life of these ranch workers during the Great Depression. The bunk house is very simple, an efficient set up for this kind of work. Steinbeck uses a simile to give the reader a poetic, yet dingy description: 

At about ten o’clock in the morning the sun threw a bright dust-laden bar through one of the side windows, and in and out of the beam flies shot like rushing stars.