How is a sense of perfection conveyed in the opening two paragraphs of Of Mice and Men?
Book: Mice and Men By John Steinbeck
Opening: Paragraph 1 and 2 first page
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. On one side of the river
the golden foothill slopes curve up to the strong and rocky Gabilan
mountains, but on the valley side the water is lined with trees –
willows fresh and green with every spring, carrying in their lower
leaf junctures the debris of the winter’s flooding; and sycamores
with mottled, white, recumbent limbs and branches that arch over
the pool. On the sandy bank under the trees the leaves lie deep
and so crisp that a lizard makes a great skittering if he runs
among them. Rabbits come out of the brush to sit on the sand in
the evening, and the damp flats are covered with the night tracks
of ’coons, and with the spread pads of dogs from the ranches, and
with the split-wedge tracks of deer that come to drink in the dark.
There is a path through the willows and among the sycamores, a
path beaten hard by boys coming down from the ranches to swim
in the deep pool, and beaten hard by tramps who come wearily
down from the highway in the evening to jungle-up near water. In
front of the low horizontal limb of a giant sycamore there is an ash
pile made by many fires; the limb is worn smooth by men who
have sat on it.
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. On one side of the river
the golden foothill slopes curve up to the strong and rocky Gabilan
mountains, but on the valley side the water is lined with trees –
willows fresh and green with every spring, carrying in their lower
leaf junctures the debris of the winter’s flooding; and sycamores
with mottled, white, recumbent limbs and branches that arch over
the pool. On the sandy bank under the trees the leaves lie deep
and so crisp that a lizard makes a great skittering if he runs
among them. Rabbits come out of the brush to sit on the sand in
the evening, and the damp flats are covered with the night tracks
of ’coons, and with the spread pads of dogs from the ranches, and
with the split-wedge tracks of deer that come to drink in the dark.
There is a path through the willows and among the sycamores, a
path beaten hard by boys coming down from the ranches to swim
in the deep pool, and beaten hard by tramps who come wearily
down from the highway in the evening to jungle-up near water. In
front of the low horizontal limb of a giant sycamore there is an ash
pile made by many fires; the limb is worn smooth by men who
have sat on it.