A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool.
– John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men, Chapter 1. Opening words of novella introduce a mood of peacefulness. The words paint an idyllic scene, establishing from the beginning the importance of land and nature to the story. But Soledad is also spanish for ‘lonely’ or ‘solitude’ and this foreshadows the key theme of isolation and loneliness throughout the novella.