Much of the novella is about the outsider in American society. It is defined by people who exist on the margins of society and who have next-to-no significant power, influence or importance. The Great Depression helped to make millions of Americans live as outsiders, without economic, political, or social power. The migrant lifestyle George and Lennie experience is one of the best examples of the outsider because they have no larger, stable social and economic group that they are part of: the only group they are part of is the marginalized, powerless, drifting laboring group. They move from ranch to ranch and hope to find work. When the work is gone, so are they. Steinbeck captures the feeling of being a drifting outsider when describing the bunkhouse in Chapter 2. He describes signs of transient of life that are representative of the outsider since nothing reflects permanence.