"I ain't got no people," George said. "I seen the guys that go around on the ranches alone. That ain't no good. They don't have no fun. After a long time they get mean. They get wantin’ to fight all the time."
Chapter 3 · George Milton
Context
George, still in confessional mode with Slim, lays out solitaire while reflecting on what he has observed happens to men who work the ranches without companions.
Analysis
The progression of short declaratives—'That ain't no good. They don't have no fun. After a long time they get mean'—uses the temporal marker 'after a long time' to pathologize solitude as a chronic condition with predictable symptoms, like a clinician describing disease progression. The game of solitaire George is laying out as he speaks materializes the very isolation he is diagnosing: he literally plays alone with himself even as he insists he is not one of those who do.
How to Use in Essay
Support a thesis that Steinbeck uses the recurring image of solitaire to figure migrant loneliness as a default state George is one Lennie away from—the card game George keeps returning to throughout this chapter visualizes the solitary fate he is verbally repudiating.