The bunk house is very spare and austere. The ranch hands all share it (except for Crooks, who is segregated because he is black) and have no privacy. The men each get a bunk and shelf for their belongings and not much else. A stove heats the space.
The bunk house tells us that the ranch hands are given the bare necessities in terms of living quarters. The quarters are impersonal, reflecting the migrant and seasonal nature of the work. George checks his bunk carefully for bugs, suggesting that sometimes bunkhouses are not as clean as they could be.
Part of the dream George and Lennie have about owning a farm is privacy: an allure is not having to share space with people they don't like. If the bunkhouse reflects the rootlessness, insecurity, lack of control over their lives, and low status of the migrant workers in 1930s America, the farm represents the urge for rootedness and security.
Saturday, October 28, 2017
How does Steinbeck’s description of the bunk house give us insight about ranch life and larger issues affecting migrant workers in the 1930s?
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