“The boss was expectin’ you last night,” the old man said. “He was sore as hell when you wasn’t here to go out this morning.”
Chapter 2 · Candy
Context
Candy, the old swamper, has just admitted George and Lennie to the bunk house and is explaining why the boss is annoyed at their late arrival. This is the first human speech in the chapter.
Analysis
Candy delivers the boss's anger in reported speech rather than as his own complaint—'He was sore'—performing the swamper's lifelong position as conduit rather than agent, the one who relays power without exercising it. The double negative 'wasn't' marks the dialect register that will function throughout the novel as a class marker, and notably Candy speaks for the absent boss before introducing himself, suggesting whose voice he has been trained to amplify.
How to Use in Essay
Support a thesis that Steinbeck constructs Candy as the structural figure of the worker who has internalized managerial authority—his first utterance ventriloquizes the boss, prefiguring his later inability to defend his own dog.