Point of View

Steinbeck uses an omniscient third person narrator to tell the story. This technique allows him to explore the story’s underlying ideas from varying perspectives and present a relatively unbiased account of the struggle between workers and invested capital, an exploration of communism that tries neither to champion nor condemn it, but simply to understand it. Readers are left to form their own opinions of the merits of the arguments for each side in the struggle, but the lack of emotional identification with a first person narrator often leaves readers feeling somewhat distanced from the characters.

Setting

The exposition of the novel takes place in the unnamed California city where Jim joins the Communist party, but with the rising action, the setting switches to the fictional Torgas Valley, an apple-growing region in central California.

The description of Jim’s hotel room in the opening paragraph...