In “Of Mice & Men” by John Steinbeck, the time in which the story takes place and various other things affect a lot of the way how the characters in the story think and act. For example, the price of purchasing a ranch. In the story, for characters George and Lennie, they need just around $600 in order to purchase the ranch of their dreams. Such a ranch they dream on purchasing would likely cost so much more than what is stated in the book. It just goes to show how cheap everything became during the Great Depression. It also relates to the characters themselves. George and Lennie are constantly working from job to job, being, in a way, homeless; similar to the people that they’ve met on the ranch that they work at in the middle of the story. The depression is a wall that all characters are experiencing and are attempting to climb.